Page:Alice Stuyvesant - The Vanity Box.djvu/94

which come often after rain. Last night there had been a heavy shower which had sent the temperature down, and the air smelled of a thousand flowers, whose perfume mingled with the sweet scent of new-cut grass and the freshness of moist earth. It seemed a day made for youth and happiness. The heavy sense of oppression was gone from the atmosphere, and the lawns and flower-beds shining in the gay summer sunlight were so beautiful that it was almost impossible to believe in the tragedy behind the drawn window-curtains of the old house. But once inside, it became easy to believe. A door at the left of the oak-panelled hall was kept by a policeman in uniform. It was the door of the library; for in the library the inquest was to be held. Mrs. Ricardo, as a relative of a witness, was allowed to go in, and though she shuddered, and was very pale under her powder, it would have been a bitter disappointment to miss the great drama about to be enacted. She had heard comparatively few details of the murder, for people contradicted each other, and there were the wildest rumours afloat. Some said that a gypsy had been arrested, others that no arrest had been made, but that the police had "something up their sleeve" which would come out through witnesses at the inquest. Maud Ricardo sincerely believed that she was very sad, heavily oppressed by the tragedy which had fallen on the house, but in reality all that was primitive in her—