“Did you denounce him? Did you treacherously show up the letter you took away with you? It was well done, Lady Jane!”
Jane bent her sorrowful face, so calm and good in its pity, upon the raging one. “It is not I who have done it, Laura. Denounce your husband? No, I would have carried the secret with me to the grave, for your sake.”
Laura sank down again in the revulsion of feeling, and burst into a flood of tears most distressing to witness. She laid her head on her sister’s bosom, and openly avowed the part she had enacted, regarding the safe and the skeleton key. Remorse was taking possession of her. And Mrs. Pepperfly, subdued to meekness in her astonishment, dropped a silent curtsey and retired, cruelly grieving over the hot gin-and-water which might have been so near.
CHAPTER LVI.THE EXAMINATION.
Somewhere about the same hour that the arrest of Mr. Carlton took place, or possibly a trifle later, Lady Grey was sitting at work in her house in Savile Row, when a telegraphic despatch was brought in from Great Wennock. She did not open it; it was addressed to Sir Stephen; but she believed she knew what the contents must be, and smiled to herself over her sewing.
“Another excuse for a day or two more with Lucy,” she said to her husband when he came in, as she handed him the message.
“Then I shall send Mr. Fred a peremptory mandate,” returned Sir Stephen, not feeling pleased. “He ought to have been up a week ago. Halloa! what’s this?”
“Great Wennock Station, one o’clock, p.m. Frederick Grey to Sir Stephen Grey, M.D.
“The mystery of the prussic acid is on the point of discovery. Come off at once, if possible. I have heard you say you should like to be present at the clearing. Tell my mother I was right.”Sir Stephen read it twice over and then aloud to his wife. “What a strange thing!” he exclaimed, in the surprise of the moment. “And ‘tell my mother I was right!’ What on earth does he mean, Mary?”
Lady Grey made no satisfactory answer. She had never spoken of her son’s rash and, as she deemed, unjustifiable suspicion of Mr. Carlton, and she would not speak of it now.
“Shall you go, Stephen?”
“This very moment. There’s nothing to prevent me to-day, and I’d go to the end of the world to be proved blameless in the eyes of South Wennock. I hope I shall just catch a train!”
In point of fact Frederick Grey had been made aware a trifle earlier than the general public, of what was going on before the magistrates, and he had mounted a fleet horse and sent off the telegram to his father. He would not have aided to bring the guilt home to Mr. Carlton; nay, he would have suppressed it had it lain in his power; but if it was to be done, it was well that his father should be present at his clearing.
He rode more leisurely back again; but not very leisurely either, for South Wennock was in excitement today. And he found the examination of Mr. Carlton already begun, every body connected with it deep in the proceedings.
He might have walked on the people’s heads in the vicinity of the court; not a tenth portion could get into the small place designated by the grand name of town hall. Never had South Wennock been in the like commotion; that which had occurred at those past proceedings, connected with the death of Mrs. Crane, was as nothing to this.
But the crowd recognised his right to a place, as the son of the once accused man, Stephen Grey; the justices did the same; and Frederick was politely offered (providing he could got to the spot) about an inch and a half of room on the bench. His Uncle John occupied a seat on it; people made much of the Greys that day.
Frederick found the examination tolerably advanced. Mrs. Smith had given her evidence in public, declaring all she knew and all she suspected, for, allow me to tell you, you who are not aware of the fact, that a bench of country justices consults its own curiosity as to what it shall and shall not hear, and sometimes has a very indefinite notion indeed of whether such and such evidence can be legally tendered in law. The justices’ own opinion stands for law in many places. Judith Ford was under examination when Frederick entered, and the prisoner, as we are compelled to call Mr. Carlton, perpetually interrupted it, and got into hot squabbles with his defender in consequence. This gentleman was a Mr. Billiter, universally called Lawyer Billiter by South Wennock. He had been sent for in great haste to watch the case for Mr. Carlton, and was exerting himself to the utmost: they had been intimate acquaintances. Mr. Carlton stood his ground with calm equanimity. Ho was very pale, but nobody in South Wennock had ever seen him otherwise; and at moments he stirred as if restless. Calm, good-looking,