Page:Braddon--Wyllard's weird.djvu/17

Rh "You had better come inside," said Wyllard; "there is plenty of room;" whereupon Bothwell took the back seat of the barouche, opposite his cousin and her husband.

Bodmin town was some miles from Bodmin Road, a lovely drive in the tranquil July eventide; but both those men were haunted by the vision of that dead face, those dislocated limbs, hanging loosely, like a dead stag hauled along by huntsman and whip, while the hounds cluster round their prey. An event so terrible was not to be dismissed lightly.

"I wonder who she was, and where she was going?" said Bothwell.

"Some little nursery governess, I daresay, going to her situation."

"In that case we shall hear all about her at the inquest. She will have been expected, and her employers will come to the fore."

"What a terrible thing for her parents, if they are living; most of all for her poor mother!" said Mrs. Wyllard.

She pronounced the last word with peculiar softness. She had an exalted idea of the sacredness of the relationship between mother and child. She had passionately loved her own mother; had passionately longed for a child in the earlier years of her wedded life. But she had been a wife seven years, and no child had lived to bless her. A son had been born within a year of her marriage—born only to die: and now she had left off hoping that she would ever be called upon this earth by the dear name of mother.

They drove past familiar woods and hills, ferny dells, and limpid brooks. They saw the great brown tors standing afar off against the amber sky: but that one haunting thought of a horrible death spoiled all the beauty of the scene. They had no eyes for the landscape, but sat in serious silence.

Mr. Wyllard alighted at the Bodmin police-station, and spent about ten minutes in conversation with the Inspector, who was at once shocked and elated on hearing of the strange death on the railway. He was shocked at the horror of the thing; he was elated at the idea of an inquiry and investigation which might result in honour and profit to himself.

Mrs. Wyllard sat in the carriage with Bothwell, while her husband and the official conversed gravely on the threshold of the station-house. Bothwell talked about the girl and her mysterious death. He described the poor little white face, the look of horror in that glassy stare of death.

"Did she look like a lady?" asked Dora, full of painful interest.

"Hardly, I think. She had that pretty, neat appearance which one sees in French girls of a class just a little above the . Her frock, and her boots, and her cotton gloves must