Only three days before the tragic event occurred to Rachel, Luke had been despatched to London by John Massingbird to put things in a train of preparation for the voyage. Luke said nothing abroad of his going, and the village only knew he was away by missing him.
"What's gone of Luke?" many asked of his father.
"Oh, he's off to London on some spree; he can tell ye about it when he gets back," was Roy's answer.
When he got back! John's departure was intended for the day following that one when you saw him packing his clothes, but the untimely end of Rachel had induced him to postpone it. Or, rather, the command of Mr. Verner—a command which John could not conveniently disobey had he wished. He had won over Mr. Verner to promise him a substantial sum, to "set him up," as he phrased it, in Australia; and that sum was not yet handed to him.
CHAPTER VIII.
ROBIN'S VOW.
The revelation at the inquest had affected Mr. Verner in no measured degree, greatly increasing, for the time, his bodily ailments. He gave orders to be denied to all callers; he could not bear the comments that would be made. An angry, feverish desire to find out who had played the traitor grew strong within him. Innocent, pretty, child-like Rachel! who was it that had set himself, in his wickedness, deliberately to destroy her? Mr. Verner now deemed it more than likely that she had been the author of her own death. It was of course impossible to tell: but he dwelt on that part of the tragedy less than on the other. The one injury was uncertain; the other was a fact.
What rendered it all the more obscure was the absence of any previous grounds of suspicion. Rachel had never been observed to be on terms of intimacy with any one. Luke Roy had been anxious to court her, as Verner's Pride knew; but Rachel had utterly repudiated the wish. Luke it was not. And who else was there?
The suspicions of Mr. Verner veered, almost against his will, towards those of his own household. Not to Lionel; he honestly believed Lionel to be too high-principled: but towards his step-sons. He had no particular cause to suspect either of them, unless the testimony of Mrs. Duff's son about the tall gentleman could furnish it; and it may be said that his suspicion strayed to them only from the total absence of any other quarter to fix it upon. Of the two, he could rather fix upon John, than Frederick. No scandal, touching Frederick, had ever reached his ears: plenty of it touching John. In fact, Mr. Verner was rather glad to help in shipping John off to some faraway place, for he considered him no credit to Verner's Pride, or benefit to the neighbourhood. Venial sins sat lightly on the conscience of John Massingbird.