He rose hastily, bathed his face, and battled for a time with the emotions that overpowered him. Strange to say, the memories of his youthful days strengthened, his determination to carry out what he had last night begun.
"Could he allow the children of his lost Fanny to starve in poverty, or to feel that their father could support them no longer?"
No! impossible! he must carry it through—she, his second wife, would have done it had she lived; no one would be injured, the money was his morally, and if not quite legally, that was of no consequence.
This decision produced a kind of calm, like the effects of an opiate, so that when he appeared at breakfast the haggard look of excitement was gone; the pale, calm face created a feeling of sympathy, more especially in the warm heart of Kate Marston, whom Fanny's children had already learnt to love.
During the day when he attended the inquest he listened with almost stoical indifference to a detail of the circumstances attending his wife's death. He answered the questions put to him by the coroner calmly and truthfully; not even the examination of the medical man, from whose evidence he learnt that a post-mortem examination had taken place, could rouse in him the slightest interest.
Yet the pale and sorrowful expression of his face excited the sympathy of those present, especially while being questioned by the coroner.
"You were then not aware that your wife was suffering from disease of the heart, Mr. Franklyn?"
"No," he replied, "not in the least; she never gave me reason to suppose that such was the case, even by a hint."
"And I believe you hurried to the station on the day of the occurrence?"
A kind of spasm passed over the face of Arthur Franklyn, and his lips quivered as he replied—