Page:Arminell, a social romance (1896).djvu/276

 A CONTRETEMPS.

inquest on young Tubb took place on the following day. This occasioned fresh unpleasantness, and further excitement of feeling. Unfortunately Captain Saltren was on the jury, and he insisted against all evidence and reason, in maintaining that the verdict should be to the effect that Archelaus Tubb had been murdered by his lordship. One other juryman agreed with him, but the others could not go so far. As Saltren stubbornly refused to yield, the jury was discharged, and another summoned by the coroner, which returned "Accidental death," but with a rider blaming Macduff for carelessness in the destruction of the cottage.

Arminell was changed in her behaviour to her father since she had heard Mrs. Saltren's story. She had lost faith in him; those good qualities which she had previously recognised in him, she now believed to be unreal. The man as he was had been disclosed to her—false, sensual, wanting in honour. All the good he displayed was the domino cast over and concealing the mean and shabby reality. He wore his domino naturally, with a frank bonhommie which was the perfection of acting—but then, it was acting. Arminell was very straightforward, blunt and sincere, and hated everything which was not open. Social life she represented to herself as a school of disguises, a masquerade in which no one