As she put to herself these questions, which she dared not answer, it seemed to Frances Vernon that the world had changed all at once; as if, as a child would have put it, something had gone wrong with the works, so that it had suddenly got jarred, and was no longer just as it was a few moments ago. For the first time in her short life she was brought into contact with the tragedy of crime; so that, as it seemed, she had to inhale its atmosphere into her lungs. It is a result of such a training as she had received that, when crime did come to have a personal application, the revelation of the existence of the thing, from the knowledge of which she had been carefully screened, stunned as it never would have done had she been brought up with her eyes wide open. Murder? All she knew of murder she had learnt from the commandments. Her guardian? Dorothy? She could have screamed aloud because of the agony which came to her with the thought that there could be any association between Dorothy's guardian, and Dorothy, and murder.
She stayed there, in a sort of stupor, longer than she knew; and was only roused from it by her mother's coming into the room through the open French window.
"Frances! Where have you been? Do you know that all the people have gone? If Dorothy has been keeping you, you ought not to have let her; you ought to have been there to say good-bye." She perceived that there was something unusual in her daughter's attitude. "Frances! What is the matter with you? Why are you staring at me like that? What is that you have in your hand? The Times! Do you mean to say that you have been reading the newspaper and forgetting what you owe to your friends? What will your father say? Frances, speak to me! What is the matter with the girl?"
Frances did speak; or, rather, she tried to speak; seeming to find as much difficulty in producing articulate sounds as Dorothy Gilbert had done a little time before.
"Mother, look--look at the paper!"
She held it out stiffly, as some lay figure might have done. Not unnaturally her mother observed her with surprise.
"Frances, I insist upon your telling me what is the matter with you; why should I look at the paper? You know very well that your father doesn't like you to read newspapers."
Frances said her four words over again:
"Look at the paper!"
"Why do you wish me to do so? What am I to look at?" She took the paper from her daughter's outstretched hand. Frances pointed to a part of it. Mrs Vernon began to read aloud: "'The historic inn, "The Bolton Arms," at Newcaster, was on Monday night----' What stuff is this?"