“Then all over the house, suddenly, the air was filled with the shrieks of women.
“Alas! my lady had got up; she was dressed: she was on the landing; she heard the cries.
“ ‘What has happened?’ she asked.
“ ‘Mr. Holme is murdered.’
“I do not know who told her. None of the maids confessed the thing, but when she heard the news she fell back, all of a sudden, like a woman knocked down.
“We took her up and carried her to bed. When the doctor came in an hour my lady was dead—the most beautiful, the kindest, the sweetest, most generous-hearted lady that ever lived. She was dead, and all we could do was to look after the new-born babe. And as for her husband, that poor gentleman sat in his study with haggard looks and face all drawn with his grief, so that it was a pity and a terror to look upon him. Wife and brother-in-law—wife and friend—both cut off in a single morning! Did one ever hear the like? As for the unfortunate victim, Mr. Holme that had been, they laid him in the dining-room to wait the inquest.”
At this point Leonard laid down the book and looked round. The place was quite quiet. Even from the street there came no noise of footsteps or of wheels. Once more he was overpowered by this strange loathing—a kind of sickness. He closed his eyes and lay back. Before him, as in a vivid dream, he saw that procession with the body of the murdered man; and he saw the murdered lady fall shrieking to the ground; and he saw the old recluse of the Park, then young, sitting alone, with haggard face, while one body lay in the dining-room and the other on the marriage-bed.
The feeling of sickness passed away. Leonard opened his eyes and forced himself, but with a beating heart and a dreadful feeling of apprehension, to go on with the reading:
“I remember that the house was very quiet, so quiet that we could hear in my room—the housekeeper’s room—the cries and shouts of the two little boys in the nursery, which was the room next to where the mother lay dead. The boys were Master Langley, the eldest, who was three, and Master Christopher, then a year and a half.
“Little did those innocents understand of the trouble that was coming upon them from the terrible tragedy of that day. They would grow up without a mother—the most terrible calamity that can befall a child: and they were to grow up, as well, without a father, for the master has never recovered the shock, and now, I fear, never will.