I touched her lightly with my hand. She drew away from me.
“I think you are wicked, and I know that what has been must be expiated. That is an inevitable law.”
I shivered. There was a stern intensity in her voice despite its music.
“Yes,” she continued, “I love you still, but I have no joy in doing so. If by dying I could make you better, I would willingly die, but I could never again——”
She broke off abruptly, but I knew what she had intended saying, and I also knew that she meant it.
She moved away, and left me peering out into the dark, mechanically trying to distinguish the features of the landscape as they became more and more blurred by the gathering dusk.
Finally, I heard the library door open behind me, but pretended not to have done so. I started with feigned surprise when Mr. Gascoyne touched me on the arm. The little piece of acting was quite unneeded, but it denoted the nervous necessity that I felt for dissimulation. One glance at his face, even in the dusk, reassured me that, so far, I was not in any way an object of suspicion.
“There will have to be an inquest, Israel. Phillimore is convinced that Gascoyne was poisoned. I think his insistence on the point rather annoys Dr. Grange.”
“I concluded that an inquest would be necessary. When is it to be held?”
“Phillimore has wired to London for a specialist in poisons, and the post-mortem will take place directly he arrives. It appears that Phillimore was mixed up in the Greybridge poisoning case, and knows a good deal about these things. Not,” he added hastily, “that there is the least suspicion of foul play.”