Part 61 (1/2)

”Oh----” broke from his hearer, in a long sigh of fear and intelligence.

Mr. Langhope looked at her with a smile of miserable exultation.

”You knew--you suspected all along?--But now you must speak out!” he exclaimed with a sudden note of command.

She sat motionless, as if trying to collect herself. ”I know nothing--I only meant--why was this never known before?”

He was upon her at once. ”You think--because they understood each other?

And now there's been a break between them? He wanted too big a share of the spoils? Oh, it's all so abysmally vile!”

He covered his face with a shaking hand, and Mrs. Ansell remained silent, plunged in a speechless misery of conjecture. At length she regained some measure of her habitual composure, and leaning forward, with her eyes on his face, said in a quiet tone: ”If I am to help you, you must try to tell me just what has happened.”

He made an impatient gesture. ”Haven't I told you? She found that her accomplice meant to speak, and rushed to town to forestall him.”

Mrs. Ansell reflected. ”But why--with his place at Saint Christopher's secured--did Dr. Wyant choose this time to threaten her--if, as you imagine, he's an accomplice?”

”Because he's a drug-taker, and she didn't wish him to have the place.”

”She didn't wish it? But that does not look as if she were afraid. She had only to hold her tongue!”

Mr. Langhope laughed sardonically. ”It's not quite so simple. Amherst was coming to town to tell me.”

”Ah--_he_ knows?”

”Yes--and she preferred that I should have her version first.”

”And what is her version?”

The furrows of misery deepened in Mr. Langhope's face. ”Maria--don't ask too much of me! I can't go over it again. She says she wanted to spare my child--she says the doctors were keeping her alive, torturing her uselessly, as a...a sort of scientific experiment.... She forced on me the hideous details....”

Mrs. Ansell waited a moment.

”Well! May it not be true?”

”Wyant's version is different. _He_ says Bessy would have recovered--he says Garford thought so too.”

”And what does she answer? She denies it?”

”No. She admits that Garford was in doubt. But she says the chance was too remote--the pain too bad...that's her cue, naturally!”

Mrs. Ansell, leaning back in her chair, with hands meditatively stretched along its arms, gave herself up to silent consideration of the fragmentary statements cast before her. The long habit of ministering to her friends in moments of perplexity and distress had given her an almost judicial keenness in disentangling and coordinating facts incoherently presented, and in seizing on the thread of motive that connected them; but she had never before been confronted with a situation so poignant in itself, and bearing so intimately on her personal feelings; and she needed time to free her thoughts from the impending rush of emotion.

At last she raised her head and said: ”Why did Mr. Amherst let her come to you, instead of coming himself?”

”He knows nothing of her being here. She persuaded him to wait a day, and as soon as he had gone to the mills this morning she took the first train to town.”

”Ah----” Mrs. Ansell murmured thoughtfully; and Mr. Langhope rejoined, with a conclusive gesture: ”Do you want more proofs of panic-stricken guilt?”

”Oh, guilt--” His friend revolved her large soft m.u.f.f about a drooping hand. ”There's so much still to understand.”