“Stop a minute,” said Amelius.
“I beg your pardon?” said Mr. Melton politely, at a loss to understand the interruption.
“I didn’t at first know what you meant,” Amelius explained. “You put it, if you will forgive me for saying so, in rather a roundabout way. If you are alluding, all this time, to Mrs. Farnaby’s death, I must honestly tell you that I know of it already.”
The bland self-possession of Mr. Melton’s face began to show signs of being ruffled. He had been in a manner deluded into exhibiting his conventionally fluent eloquence, in the choicest modulations of his sonorous voice—and it wounded his self esteem to be placed in his present position. “I understood you to say,” he remarked stiffly, “that you had not seen the evening newspapers.”
“You are quite right,” Amelius rejoined; “I have not seen them.”
“Then may I inquire,” Mr. Melton proceeded, “how you became informed of Mrs. Farnaby’s death?”
Amelius replied with his customary frankness. “I went to call on the poor lady this morning,” he said, “knowing nothing of what had happened. I met the doctor at the door; and I was present at her death.”
Even Mr. Melton’s carefully-trained composure was not proof against the revelation that now opened before him. He burst out with an exclamation of astonishment, like an ordinary man.
“Good heavens, what does this mean!”
Amelius took it as a question addressed to himself. “I’m sure I don’t know,” he said quietly.