"Oh, no you don't. Come, brace up now. My part of the work is done, but yours is just beginning. I have saved you from suspicion, but you must keep yourself saved. That's right, brighten up. Now you are beginning to look like yourself. Why, nothing so very bad has been done. We have enacted a little drama, that's all. Such things, or things on a par with them, are enacted every day. The newspapers are full of stranger things. We haven't hired a 'castle' and entered upon a career of wholesale murder; we haven't cut up a woman and made her into sausage."
The voice of William was heard in the passage, scolding a housemaid for disturbing his papers. The old man tapped on the door and Goyle opened it.
"Ah, you here?" said the old man, stepping into the room. "You'd better go in to breakfast. Well, sir, I never saw anything like it in my life. I can't put a thing down and find it where I left it. George, what's the matter with you this morning?"
"Nothing at all, sir. I had a headache and didn't sleep very well. That's all. Is the Judge up yet?"
"I believe not. And when he does get up I want to have a talk with him. I'll be hanged if he didn't get that preacher to laughing at me last night—laughing at me right here in my own house. I can stand a good deal, but when a preacher laughs at me, why things have gone too far."
Goyle smiled upon him. "But, Mr. Elbridge, a preacher means quite as little when he laughs as when he talks."
This pleased the old man, and he chuckled, his fat sides shaking. Bodney smiled, too, and Goyle gave him a look of approval and it appeared to brighten him. He dressed himself hastily, turning occasionally to heed a remark made by Goyle or the old man, and when he stepped out of the room to go with them to breakfast, his face was not so yellow, nor his countenance so haggard.
CHAPTER IV.
STOOD LOOKING AT THEM.
About two hours later Florence was sitting alone in the drawing room when Howard entered. She asked him if he had seen his father that morning. He sat down on a sofa beside her and said, after a moment's reflection: