"There's only one Sir Benjamin Collins that I know of," she answered curtly.
"But—but—it can't be!——"
Of course there was no reason in the world why it couldn't. Quite on the contrary, there was that best of all reasons why it could—it had happened. Three bullet-wounds are three undeniable reasons. It was the third, the brief account said, that had proved fatal.
"They say the finest view in Asia's Bombay from the stern of a steamer," said Lady Tasker, with no expression whatever. "I think your friend Mr. Cosimo Pratt will be seeing it before very long."
But Dorothy was white. Their Sir Benjamin!... Why, as a little girl she had called him "Uncle Ben!" He had not been an uncle really, of course, but she had called him that. She could remember the smell of his cigars, and the long silences as he had played chess with her father, and his hands with the coppery hair on them, and his laugh, and the way the markhor at the Zoo had sniffed at his old patoo-coat, just as cats now sniffed at her own set of civet furs. And she had married him one day in the nursery, when she had been about ten, and he had taken her to the Pantomime that afternoon for a Honeymoon—and then, when she had really married Stan, he had given her the very rugs that were on her bedroom floor at this moment.
And, if this pink paper was to be believed, an Invisible Man had shot at him three times, and at the third shot had killed him.
She had not heard her aunt's words about Cosimo. She had been standing with her hand in Mr. Miller's, having put it there when he had risen to take himself off and forgotten to withdraw it again. Then Mr. Miller had gone, and Dorothy had stood looking stupidly at her aunt.
"What did you say?" she said. "You said something about Cosimo Pratt."
"Don't you go, Katie; I want to talk to you presently.—Sit down, Dot.—Get her a drink of water."
Dorothy sat heavily down and put out one hand for the paper again.—"What did you say?" she asked once more.