"What do you say?" he asked, bending his ear, for the words on her lips had dropped to a low murmur. "What?"
"He has surely been murdered by Mr. Hardcastle."
[CHAPTER V.]
HOME, IN DESPAIR.
The Reverend Mr. Prattleton literally recoiled at the words, and staggered back a few steps in his dismay. Not at first could he recover his amazement. The suggestion was so dreadful, so entirely, as he believed, uncalled for, that he began to doubt whether poor Mrs. Dundyke's trouble had not turned her brain.
"It surely, surely is so!" she impressively repeated. "He has been murdered, and by Mr. Hardcastle."
"Good heavens, my dear lady, you must not allow your imagination to run away with you in this manner!" cried the shocked clergyman. "A gentleman in Mr. Hardcastle's position of life——"
"Oh, stop! stop!" she interrupted; "is it his position of life? Is he indeed Mr. Hardcastle?"
And she began, in her agitation, to pour out forthwith the whole tale: the various half doubts of the Hardcastles, suppressed until now. Her conviction that Mrs. Hardcastle was certainly not a lady, their embarrassments for money, and other little items. Then there had been the long absence of Mr. Hardcastle on the day of the disappearance; his sneaking upstairs quietly on his return, hurt and scratched, warm and dusty, as if he had walked far; his sudden change of colour when she asked after her husband, and the angry look turned upon his wife when she suggested that he had possibly been with Mr. Dundyke. There was the description given by the Swiss peasant of the two gentlemen he had seen walking together that day, and the furious quarrel she had heard at night, when her husband's name was mentioned. All was told to Mr. Prattleton, what she knew, what she thought; all with an exception: the one faint suspicion that had crossed her as to whether Mr. Hardcastle could be Benjamin Carr. She did not mention that. Perhaps it had faded from her memory; and Benjamin Carr, a gentleman born, would be no more likely to commit a murder than the real Mr. Hardcastle. However it may have been, she did not mention it, then, or at any other time.