“Shall you tell him what my own belief is?” said Anne.
“Certainly! Why not?”
“But,” exclaimed Margaret, “do you not think—”
“No. No, dear, I don’t think at all as yet. I have no material for thinking—very little, at least.” He spoke with unhabitual impatience. “Evidence is what we want.”
He was annoyed by this mysterious crime in the midst of his idle hours; troubled by his wife’s distress; and finally, if but to a slight extent, irritated at Anne’s unreasoning dash at a decisive conclusion. Perhaps he was the more disturbed because, on hearing her, he had at once begun to put together facts, always within his own knowledge, which he felt should have caused him to have gone, under guidance of reason, toward the goal which she had reached at a bound.
“I shall be back in three or four hours. Do not keep the dinner waiting. Good-by.”
“But, Archibald, do listen to me. It is not about—about this—” And she followed him as she spoke, and, at the edge of the cliff, said a few words hastily, but with earnestness.
“No,” he said, so that Anne heard. “I see—I see, of course; but there is no help for it; and, after all, Carington is not a man—” And the rest was lost to Anne’s ear.
“Perhaps not,” said Margaret. “I suppose you know best.” And she went back to Anne.