"Christie has, I fear, been waylaid and——"
"Murdered! Oh, Heaven!" exclaimed Mrs. Tom, falling back in her chair and covering her face with her hands.
There was a moment's awful silence. Then Mrs. Tom, who (no matter what the emergency) never allowed her ever-practical mind to be long overclouded, dropped her hands from before her face, and, though she was frightfully pale, said, in a voice whose firmness astonished Sibyl:
"What makes you think so, Sibyl? My poor little Christie had not an enemy in the world!"
"Oh! she had—she had!" cried Sibyl, thinking, with bitter remorse, how intensely she herself had hated her.
"Who was it?" said Mrs. Tom, starting up. "No one but a monster could have hurted one hair of her gentle head! Miss Sibyl, who do you think has done it?"
"I do not know—as Heaven hears me, I do not know!" said Sibyl, recovering herself.
"What makes you think she was murdered?" said Mrs. Tom, who by this time had recovered all her customary composure, and now fixed her eyes keenly on Sibyl's face.
"Last night I, too, like your nephew, heard the cry of murder," said Sibyl, shuddering at the recollection; "and early this morning, I discovered in a bush, down near the shore, a pocket-handkerchief, stained with blood, and marked with her name!"
"Where is the handkerchief?"