"I told them so, sir. But they laughed at me. They said who'd be likely to come through the grounds and up to the windows and try them? At any rate, sir," added Joseph, as a last excuse, "they ordered it done. And that's how it is, sir, that I don't know what time either Mr. Anthony or Mr. Herbert came in last night."
Mr. Dare said no more. The fruits of the way in which his sons had been reared were coming heavily home to him. He turned to go upstairs to Herbert's chamber. On the bottom stairs, swaying herself to and fro in her peignoir, a staring print, all the colours of the rainbow, sat the governess. She lifted her white face as Mr. Dare approached.
"Is he dead?"
Mr. Dare shook his head. "The surgeon says he has been dead ever since the beginning of the night."
"And Monsieur Herbert? Is he dead?"
"He dead!" repeated Mr. Dare in an accent of alarm, fearing possibly she might have a motive for the question. "What should bring him also dead? Mademoiselle, why do you ask it?"
"Eh, me, I don't know," she answered. "I am bewildered with it all. Why should he be dead, and not the other? Why should either be dead?"
Mr. Dare saw that she did look bewildered; scarcely in her senses. She had a white handkerchief in her hand, and was wiping the moisture from her scarcely less white face. "Did you witness the quarrel between them?" he inquired, supposing that she had done so by her words.
"If I did, I not tell," she vehemently answered, her English less clear than usual. "If Joseph say—I hear him say it to you just now—that Monsieur Herbert took a knife to his brother, I not give testimony to it. What affair is it of mine, that I should tell against one or the other? Who did it?—who killed him?"—she rapidly continued. "It was not Monsieur Herbert. No, I will say always that it was not Monsieur Herbert. He would not kill his brother."
"I do not think he would," earnestly spoke Mr. Dare.