“You should stand up before the world and assert your innocence in this same emphatic manner,” returned the owner. “Why have you not done it?”
Jack’s voice took a tone of evasion at once. “I have not cared to do it.”
Charles Freeman looked at him. A sudden thought flashed into his mind.
“Are you screening some one, Captain Tanerton?”
“How can you ask such a question?” rejoined Jack. But the deep and sudden flush that rose with the words, gave fresh food for speculation to Mr. Freeman. He dropped his voice.
“Surely it was not Sir Dace Fontaine who—who killed him? The uncle and nephew were not on good terms.”
Jack’s face and voice brightened again—he could answer this with his whole heart. “No, no,” he impressively said, “it was not Sir Dace Fontaine. You may at least rely upon that.”
When I at length got back to Crabb, the Fontaines were there. After the inquest, they had gone again to Brighton. Poor Verena looked like a ghost, I thought, when I saw her on the Sunday in their pew at church.
“It has been a dreadful thing,” I said to her, as we walked on together after service; “but I am sorry to see you look so ill.”
“A dreadful thing!—ay, it has, Johnny Ludlow,” was her answer, spoken in a wail. “I expect it will kill some of us.”