"I thought you might like to hear," Anstey said, in sorrow-muffled voice; and she nodded her head for him to go on.
"He—talked of you nearly all the way," he began. "He said how——"
She stopped him. "Not that," she said, "not yet. The other—the other!"
By some instinct he knew what she meant. "It was going down the Wenderling Hill," he said, "just as we got into the town. You know that steepish hill? Halfway down was a brewer's waggon. We were going at a good stroke, not saying anything, for the moment. We got up to the waggon. 'There's that infernal white dog again,' he said. And I heard him call loudly, 'Get out of the way, you brute!' He swerved violently on one side, as if the dog were in his path—I don't know how it happened; God knows why it happened!—he was flung right under the wheels. He—thank God, he did not suffer, Nell, or know a moment's terror or regret. He died instantly."
Elinor was silent for long. She sat, with brow clasped tightly in both hands, looking intently upon the carpet at his feet, trying, he thought, to understand, to get into a mind too confused to work receptively what he was saying to her. Presently, still tightly holding her head, but with more of comprehension in her face, she looked up.
"And the dog?" she asked him. "The little white dog?"
"It's a strange thing about the dog," he told her slowly. "There wasn't one!"
IT ANSWERED
"And besides all that, the poor little woman is ill," he said. "She didn't complain much, but she looked like a ghost to-day."