Page:Jepson--The Loudwater mystery.djvu/260

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
254
THE LOUDWATER MYSTERY

Olivia sat bolt upright in her turn.

"Me?" she said in an astonishment fully as great as his. "No, I didn't."

Then with one accord they clung to one another and laughed tremulously in an immeasurable relief.

Then Olivia said: "And you didn't mind? You married me when you actually thought I'd murdered Egbert?"

"Oh, Egbert!" said Grey in a tone of contempt which placed the late Lord Loudwater definitely as a person the murder of whom was neither here nor there. Then he added: "But, hang it all! You married me when you actually thought I'd murdered him."

"I thought you did it for my sake," said Olivia.

"I thought you did it for mine—to get me out of a mess. Though I'll be shot if I believe I should have cared if you'd done it entirely on your own account. Not that you could."

"Oh, Antony, how very fond of one another we must be!" said Olivia in a hushed voice.

It was after breakfast next morning that Olivia, who stood before the window, smoking a cigarette and watching the passers-by, turned and said: "But if neither you nor I murdered Egbert, who did?"

"The mysterious woman, I suppose," said Grey, with very little show of interest in the matter.

"But I never believed that there was any mys-