"What the deuce is the matter, Nettleby?" Charley demanded, impatiently. "What is all this row about?"
"There has been a murder done," said the young man, so confounded by the discovery as to be scarcely able to speak.
"Mrs. Leroy has been murdered!"
Charley recoiled with a white face.
"Murdered! Good heavens! When? By whom?"
"To-night—just now."
He did not answer the last query—he thought it superfluous. To his mind, Charley Marsh was as good as caught in the act.
"And Nathalie! Where is she? Is she safe?"
"She is in Lady Leroy's room."
Charley only waited for the answer, and made a precipitate rush for the house. The other two followed, neither daring to look at the other or speak—followed him up-stairs and into the chamber of the tragedy. All was as it had been. The ghastly and discolored face of the murdered woman was there, even the pillow, horrible to look at. But going partly across a chair as she had fallen, all her golden hair tossed about in loose disorder, and her face white, and fixed, and cold as marble, Nathalie lay near the center of the room. There, by herself, where the dreadful sight had first struck her, she had fainted entirely away.