“If she had loved Henry, how could she, under any impulse of jealousy, have injured him? She is terrible to me in any view of the case.”
“I do not know that she did injure him, or cause him to be injured. Circumstances are against her. But I am far from believing her the guilty person. Yet I am exceedingly anxious to have a quiet interview with her. I must see her and talk with her alone. She is frightened now, and defiant. I shall soothe her—magnetize her will, as it were—and draw from her the truth. Every atom of knowledge which she has, in any way connected with Henry Moreland, I shall draw from her, and consolidate into one mass, to be used for or against her. If you have the reliance upon my judgment which I flatter myself you have, Richard, you will not object to my seeing Miss Sullivan alone, and deciding, upon that interview, whether there are causes for her arrest, as a party to the murder.”
“I shall not object. It is your privilege to see her alone; and I have the utmost confidence in you. I suppose Mr. Argyll and Henry’s father would be the proper persons to decide upon the arrest and prosecution.”
“Of course. And if, after I have talked with her, I can elicit no facts to warrant her being put on trial for her life, I shall not give her her liberty until I have consulted both families, laying all my evidence before them. They will be loth to begin a prosecution which they can not sustain, even if they have an impression of guilt. By the way, Redfield, these impressions are curious things! Supposing I should tell you there are persons who, without one particle of proof of any kind, have an impression that you are the guilty man.”
I arose from the sofa, looking at him, not knowing whether or not to knock him down.
“Don’t ‘slay me with a look,’ ” he said, laughing quietly. “I don’t say that I have any such inner revelation. And I did not say this, either, to hurt your feelings. I did it to save them. For, if I mistake not, the same person who confided his impressions to me, has recently been gradually confiding them to others. The very thought, the very possibility, once entertained, or half-entertained and driven away again, as an unwelcome guest, still has its injurious influence. You are standing upon an earthquake, Richard—you may be swallowed up any instant.”
“I?”
“Yes. I have detected the premonitory rumblings. I have said this only to warn you, that you may be ready for self-defense.”
“I scorn to defend myself! Defend myself, forsooth! against what? Who has dared to insinuate that thought against me which you have allowed yourself to echo? But I need not ask—it is my natural foe, James Argyll. He hates me as the rattlesnake hates the black-ash tree!”
“Well, the dislike is mutual. Will you deny that you, too, have had a thought—mind, I say a mere, floating thought—that he may have instigated the deed?”
My conscious eye sunk before the steel-blue glance which pierced me. God knows, such a fear, such a belief, at times vague and shadowy, again vivid but brief as lightning, had again and again troubled me. I have hinted at it once, when I said that I was glad that if James ever took money, unpermitted, from his uncle, he took it to waste at the gaming-table. Soon I raised my eyes.
“If I have had such a suspicion, I have struggled against it; I have never breathed it into mortal ear. He has sought to injure me in various ways; I have wished to win and conciliate him; to be friendly with him, for the sake of my regard for his relatives. As to taking a step to fix a blasting stigma upon him, without giving him a chance openly to efface it, I am incapable of it. You are at liberty to judge between us, Mr. Burton.”
“You know that I do not like him,” answered my companion. “But no aversion which I may feel for him shall prevent my weighing all facts which come under my observation, with the utmost impartiality. I am on the right track, in this pursuit, and I shall follow it up to the dark end, though you, yourself, abandon it. Justice shall be meted out! If the bolt strikes the loftiest head in all this aristocratic vicinity, it shall fall where it belongs.”
He left the sofa, walking up and down the corridor with a stern, thoughtful face. As for me, I sunk back on my seat, overwhelmed by the confirmation of a thousand times more than my worst fears. Suspicion of me was creeping like a shadow over the Argyll household. I had felt its approach long ago; now my whole being grew cold, freezing, except one burning spasm of indignation which throbbed in my breast.
As the gray dawn approached, the rain ceased. Morning was long in coming. As soon as it grew light enough to see, I heard the gardener cutting wood
