"Well—in very heedlessness, I ran up to the mouth of the shaft, and pretended to be listening for Dan Sandon's ghost. Mr. Raynor seized hold of me; for I was too near the edge, and the least false step might have been fatal. Not a moment had we stood there; not a moment; when a shout, followed by a blow on Mr. Raynor's shoulder, startled us. It was my poor father. He was raising his stick for another blow, when I, in my terror, pushed between him and Mr. Raynor to part them. With all my strength—and a terrified woman possesses strength—I flung them apart, not knowing the mouth of the pit was so near. I flung my father into it, Blase."
"Good mercy!" ejaculated Blase.
"Mr. Frank Raynor leaped forward to save him, and nearly lost his own life in consequence; it was an even touch whether he followed my father, or whether he could balance himself backwards. I grasped his coat, and I believe—he believes—that that alone saved him."
"I saw the scuffle," gasped Blase. "I could have taken my oath that it was Raynor who pushed your father in."
"I am telling the truth in the presence of my dead mother and before Heaven," spoke Rosaline, lifting her hands in solemnity. "Do you doubt it, Blase Pellet?"
"No—no; I can't, I don't," confessed Blase. "Moonlight's deceptive. And the wind was rushing along like mad between my eyes and the shaft."
"I only meant to part them," wailed Rosaline. "And but that my poor father was unsteady in his gait that night, he need not have fallen. It is true I pushed him close to the brink, and there he tottered, in his unsteadiness, for the space of a second, and fell backwards: his lameness made him awkward at the best of times. A stronger man, sure of his feet, need not and would not have fallen in. But oh, Blase, that's no excuse for me! It does not lessen my guilt or my misery one iota. It was I who killed him: I, I!"
"Has Mr. Raynor known this all along?" asked Blase, whose faculties for the moment were somewhat confused.
Rosaline looked at him in surprise. "Known it? Why, he was an actor in it. Ah, Blase, you have been holding Mr. Raynor guilty in your suspicious heart; he knows you have; and he has been keeping the secret out of compassion for me, bearing your ill thoughts in patient silence. All these four years he has been dreading that you would bring the accusation against him publicly. It has been in your heart; I know it has; to accuse him of my father's murder."
"No, not really," said Blase, knitting his brows. "I should never have done it. I only wanted him to think I should."