Bridget made no reply. She was beginning to wish the ground would open and swallow her up for a convenient half-hour; wished Jim Sanders had been buried also before he had brought this trouble upon her. Miss Diana, Madam, and the young ladies were surrounding her; the maid-servants began to edge away suspiciously; even Edith had dismissed her hysterics to stare at Bridget.
Cris Chattaway came leaping past them. Cris, who had been leisurely making his way to the Hold when the flames broke out, had just come up, and after a short conference with his father, was now running to the stables. "You are a fleet horseman, Cris," Mr. Chattaway had said to him: "get the engines here from Barmester." And Cris was hastening to mount a horse, and ride away on the errand.
Mrs. Chattaway caught his arm as he passed. "Oh, Cris, this is dreadful! What can have caused it?"
"What?" returned Cris, in savage tones—not, however, meant for his mother, but induced by the subject. "Don't you know what has caused it? He ought to swing for it, the felon!"
Mrs. Chattaway in her surprise connected his words with what she had just been listening to. "Cris!—do you mean——It never could have been Jim Sanders!"
"Jim Sanders!" slightingly spoke Cris. "What should have put Jim Sanders into your head, mother? No; it was your favoured nephew, Rupert Trevlyn!"
Mrs. Chattaway broke into a cry as the words came from his lips. Maude started a step forward, her face full of indignant protestation; and Miss Diana imperiously demanded what he meant.
"Don't stop me," said Cris. "Rupert Trevlyn was in the yard with a torch just before it broke out, and he must have set it on fire."
"It can't be, Cris!" exclaimed Mrs. Chattaway, in accents of intense pain, arresting her son as he was speeding away. "Who says this?"
Cris twisted himself from her. "I can't stop, mother, I say. I am going for the engines. You had better ask my father; it was he told me. It's true enough. Who would do it, except Rupert?"