"Well, here in to-day's Telegraph are the two names together. Listen: 'On the 28th inst, at her residence, London, Kate, wife of Francis Mellor (née Ray), late of Greenfield, near Beechley, Sussex.'"
"Eh?" he cried, suddenly starting up from his chair and looking wildly at his wife. "Read that again."
In dire alarm at his manner she read again: "'On the 28th inst, at her residence, London, Kate, wife of Francis Mellor (née Ray), late of Greenfield, near Beechley, Sussex.'"
"What is the good of your playing with me, you fool Her death is no good to me. I am done with her. It's his life I want, and, by ----, I shall have it too!"
"William!" cried the terrified wife. "My William! Come to me. I cannot go to you. What is the matter? You look strange, and you are saying dreadful things, and you have sworn an awful oath. What is the matter? Are you unwell? Come to me."
A sudden tremor passed through him, and with a dazed expression he looked round him.
With his short laugh he said, "I hope I didn't frighten you, Nellie, dear. I was only going over a passage of a play we used to act at school. I was always good at private theatricals."
CHAPTER XIX.
[THE TOW-PATH BY NIGHT.]
It was now the second week in June. The weather had been without a flaw. From dawn to evening the sun had moved through almost cloudless skies. It was a splendid time for children to enjoy themselves out of doors, and every day Freddie was carried from the back door of Crawford's House by his Aunt Hetty, handed into the arms of Francis Bramwell, and borne across to Boland's Ait, there to spend his time in riotous fancy and boisterous play with Frank Bramwell till the dinner hour.