Alice thought seriously before she answered.
“I should never have rested until I had avenged his death,” she said at last, and a hard glitter shone in her eyes. Then a moment after she smiled. “But it is different. I don’t think you really loved Leslie Grey. You merely thought you did.”
“That only makes it worse,” the other retorted. Prudence’s face was alight with inflexible resolve. “My debt to the dead must be paid. I see it now in a light in which it has never presented itself to me before. I must prove myself to myself before––before–––” She broke off, only to resume again with a fierce and passionate earnestness of which Alice had never believed her capable. “I can never marry George Iredale with Leslie’s unavenged death upon my conscience. I could never trust myself. George may love me now; I believe I love him, but–––No, Alice, I will never marry him until my duty to Leslie Grey is fulfilled. This shall be my punishment for my heartless forgetfulness.”
Alice surveyed her friend for some seconds without speaking. Then she burst out into a scathing protest––
“You are mad, Prue,––mad, mad, utterly mad. You would throw away a life’s happiness for the mere shadow of what you are pleased to consider a duty. Worse, you would destroy a man’s happiness for a 174 morbid phantasm. What can you do towards avenging Leslie’s death? You hold no clue. What the police have failed to fathom, how can you hope to unravel? If I were a man, do you know what I’d do to you? I’d take you by the shoulders and shake you until that foolish head of yours threatened to part company with your equally foolish body. You should have thought of these things before, and not now, when you realize how fond you are of George, set about wrecking two healthy lives. Oh, Prue, you are––are––a fool! And I can scarcely keep my temper with you.” Alice paused for want of breath and lack of vocabulary for vituperation. Prudence was looking out across the water. Her expression was quite unchanged. With all the warped illogicalness of the feminine mind she had discovered the path in which she considered her duty to lie, and was resolved to follow it.
“I have a better clue than you suppose, Alice,” she said thoughtfully, “the clue of his dying words. I understood his reference to the Winnipeg Free Press. That must be the means by which the murderer is discovered. They were not horse-thieves who did him to death. And I will tell you something else. The notice in that paper to which he referred––you know––is even now inserted at certain times. The man or men who cause that notice to be inserted in the paper were in some way responsible for his death.”
There was a moment’s pause. Then Alice spoke quite calmly.
“Tell me, Prue, has George proposed yet?”
“No.”
“Ah!” And Alice smiled broadly and turned her 175 eyes towards the setting sun. When she spoke again it was to draw attention to the time. As though by common consent the matter which had been under discussion was left in abeyance.