"No! That was only my way of putting it. What I really meant was that I did not feel myself able to face the discovery I had made without the aid of food instantly applied, and in ample quantities."
"But what about the arsenic?" she asked, with a look of perplexed amusement.
"I'm coming to the arsenic."
"I thought you intended it for Mr. Ray. What has he done?"
"Hetty, you are flippant. What has he done? Why, do you know that he lives at Camberwell?" cried Layard, putting down his knife and fork, and glaring at his sister with a horrified expression.
"Is that a capital offence at Welford?" asked Ray, trying to rouse himself.
"In the present connection it is ten thousand times a worse crime than slaying the sacred Ibis. You live at Camberwell. You walk along the tow-path. You get by a floating-stage from the tow-path to Boland's Ait. Confess! You may as well confess. I see it all now. Were you on Boland's Ait within the past week?"
"Certainly; I confess I was. Is that a still greater offence than living at Camberwell?"
"It makes parts of the stupendous crime."
"And what is the stupendous crime?"