Just then Mr. Argyll came in. After being informed of what had occurred, he went up to his daughter’s room. With uttermost tenderness he gave her the details of the murder, as they were known; his eyes overrunning with tears to see that not a drop of moisture softened her fixed, unnatural look.
Friends came in and went out with no notice from her.
“I wish they would all leave me but you, Mary,” she said, after a time. “Father, you will let me know when—”
“Yes—yes.” He kissed her, and she was left with her sister for a watcher.
Hours passed. Some of us went into the dining-room and drank of the strong tea which the housekeeper had prepared, for we felt weak and unnerved. The parents were expected in the evening train, there being but one train running on Sunday. The shadow deepened over the house from hour to hour.
It was late in the afternoon before the body could be removed from the hotel where the coroner’s inquest was held. I asked James to go with me and attend upon its conveyance to Mr. Argyll’s. He declined, upon the plea of being too much unstrung to go out.
As the sad procession reached the garden in front of the mansion with its burden, I observed, in the midst of several who had gathered about, a woman, whose face, even in that time of preoccupation, arrested my attention. It was that of a girl, young and handsome, though now thin and deadly pale, with a wild look in her black eyes, which were fixed upon the shrouded burden with more than awe and curiosity.
I know not yet why I remarked her so particularly; why her strange face made such an impression on me. Once she started toward us, and then shrunk back again. By her dress and general appearance she might have been a shop-girl. I had never seen her before.
“That girl,” said a gentleman by my side, “acts queerly. And, come to think, she was on the train from New York yesterday afternoon. Not the one poor Moreland came in; the one before. I was on board myself, and noticed her particularly, as she sat facing me. She seemed to have some trouble on her mind.”
I seldom forget faces; and I never forgot hers.