"What is all this disturbance?" she began, as she tripped across the hall, and it was the first intimation Mr. Edwin Barley had of her presence. He might have arrested her, had there been time; but she was bending over the table too soon. Believing, as she said afterwards, that it was a load of game lying there, it must have been a great shock; the grey-and-brown woollen plaid they had flung over him, from the neck downwards, looking not unlike the colour of partridge feathers in the dim light. There was no gas in the house; oil was burnt in the hall and passages—wax-candles in the sitting-rooms.
"It is Philip King!" she cried, with a sort of shriek. "What is the matter? What is amiss with him?"
"Don't you see what it is?" returned Mr. Edwin Barley, who was all this while chafing the poor cold hands. "He has been shot in the chest; marked out in the wood, and shot down like a dog."
A cry of dread—of fear—broke from her. She began to tremble violently. "How was it done, Edwin? Who did it?"
"You."
"I!" came from her ashy lips. "Are you going mad, Edwin Barley?"
"Selina, this is as surely the result of your work as though you had actually drawn the trigger. I hope you are satisfied with it!"
"How can you be so cruel?" she asked, her bosom heaving, her breath bursting from her in gasps.
He had spoken to her in a low, calm tone—not an angry one. It changed to sorrow now.
"I thought harm would come of it; I have thought so these two days; not, however, such harm as this. You have been urging that fellow a little too much against this defenceless ward and relative of mine; but I could not have supposed he would carry it on to murder. Philip King would have died quite soon enough without that, Selina; he was following Reginald with galloping strides."