"You have heard of the eccentric miser, Mark Hurdlestone?"
"Who has not?" and Juliet started, and turned pale. "Surely he has not been murdered?"
"Yes; and by his own son."
"His son? Oh, not by his son! His nephew, you mean?"
"His son. Anthony Hurdlestone. The heir of his immense wealth."
He spoke to a cold ear. Juliet had fainted.
How did that dreadful night pass over the hapless maiden? It did pass, however, and on the morrow she was far on her journey home.
"I never thought he could be guilty of a crime like this," said the Captain to his sister as she sat opposite to him in his travelling carriage. His arm encircled the slender waist of his daughter, and her pale cheek rested on his shoulder. But no tear hung in the long, dark, drooping eyelashes of his child. Juliet was stunned; but she had not wept.
"He is not guilty," she cried, in a passionate voice. "I know and feel that he is not guilty. Remember Mary Mathews—how strong the circumstantial evidence against him in that case. Yet he was innocent—innocent, poor Anthony!"
The Captain, who felt the most tender sympathy for the state of mind into which this afflicting news had thrown his child, was willing to soothe, if possible, her grief.