It needed but this to make Sophie pour out all that she knew of the old hag's cruelties to Liane up to last night, when the sounds of a supposed scuffle had penetrated to her ears, causing the family to intrude on the old woman en masse, to find that granny had only been driving a nail, and that Liane was asleep in bed.
"You saw her asleep?" he asked.
"Yes; we all tiptoed to the door, and she lay peacefully in bed, with the covers drawn up to her chin."
"You are sure that she was breathing?" he asked hoarsely.
"Why, no, sir—but—my God, do you think there could have been anything wrong?" cried Sophie, alarmed by his looks.
He answered in a voice of anguish:
"I suspect that you were looking at the corpse of sweet Liane; I suspect that the noise you heard was old granny beating her to death, and that she has hidden the dead away, and put out a hideous lie to account for her disappearance!"
Sophie was so terrified that she burst into violent weeping.
But Edmund Clarke's face wore the calmness of a terrible despair. He felt now that Liane had been foully murdered, and that nothing remained to him but to take the most complete vengeance on her murderers.