Page:Once a Week Jun to Dec 1864.pdf/424

 1, 1864.] have out that new barouche and pair, Mr. Frederick, and if I had got four horses"

"Just do be sensible," interrupted Frederick with a laugh. "A barouche and four! you'd not get Sir Stephen into it. Look here, Mrs. Fitch," he added, gravely. "If Sir Stephen has cause to rejoice at his own clearing, think how sad the news will be to him for the sake of others!—how intimate he is with some of the Chesney family."

"True, true; soon to be connected with them," murmured Mrs. Fitch. "Well, you shall have the barouche out soberly, Mr. Frederick. And indeed it comes to that, or nothing, this evening, for every other vehicle I've got is in use."

Whether this was quite true, might hebe [sic] questioned. Mrs. Fitch hurried off, and the barouche, with a pair of post horses, came out. Too impatient to care much how he got to Great Wennock, provided he did get there, Frederick Grey jumped in, and was driven off. He would not for the world have missed being the first to impart the tidings to his father.

The train came in, and Sir Stephen with it. "You are grand!" he exclaimed, surveying the barouche and pair as his son hurried him to it.

"Mrs. Fitch had no other conveyance at liberty. At least she said so. Get in, sir."

"And what have you got to say for yourself, young gentleman—hindering so much time down here?" inquired Sir Stephen, as they drove back.

"I was coming up to-day, but for something that has happened," returned Frederick. "I'll go back when you go, if you like, sir."

"And what's the business you have brought me down upon? What has turned up?"

"Your exoneration, sir, for one thing, has turned up. I hope the town won't eat you, but it is on its wild stilts to-night. And next, the true delinquent has turned up; if that's not Irish, considering that he has never been turned down, but has been close at hand all the while. He who dropped the prussic acid into your wholesome mixture."

"Dropped it purposely?"

"Purposely, there's no doubt; intending, I fear, to kill Mrs. Crane."

"And where was it done?" again interrupted Sir Stephen, too eager to listen patiently. "Dick was not waylaid, surely, after all his protestations to the contrary?"

"Dick delivered the medicine safely, and what was added to it was added to it after it was in the house; while the bottle waited in the room adjoining the sick chamber."

"That face on the stairs!" exclaimed Sir Stephen in excitement. "I knew it was no illusion. A matter-of-fact, common-sense man, like Carlton, could not have fancied such a thing. It was her husband, I suppose?"

"It was her husband, sure enough, who tampered with the medicine; but that person on the stairs, a living, breathing person, was not her husband. Father, I know I shall shock you. He who was, it's to be feared, guilty—the husband—was Lewis Carlton."

Sir Stephen roused himself from his corner of the barouche, and stared at his son's face, as well as he could in the starry night.

"What nonsense are you talking now, Frederick?"

"I wish it was nonsense, sir, for the sake of our common humanity. If this tale is true, one can't help feeling that Carlton is a disgrace to it."

"Let me hear the grounds of suspicion," said Sir Stephen, when he recovered his breath. "It will take strong proof, I can tell you, Fred, before I shall believe this of Carlton."

Frederick Grey told the story as circumstantially as he knew how. It was scarcely ended when they reached South Wennock. Sir Stephen, whether he believed it or not, was most profoundly struck with it; it excited him in no common degree. It was only fit for a romance, he remarked, not for an episode of real life.

"One of the most remarkable features in it, Frederick, assuming the guilt of Mr. Carlton, is that he should never once have been suspected by anybody!"

"I suspected him," was the answer.

"You? Nonsense!"

"I did, indeed," said Frederick, in a low tone. "A suspicion of him arose in my mind at the moment when we stood around Mrs. Crane as she lay dead. And he saw that I doubted him, too! Do you remember that he wanted to get me out of the room that night; but Uncle John spoke up and said I might be trusted?"

"Good gracious!" cried Sir Stephen, in his simple way, "I can't understand all this. What did you suspect him of?"

"I don't know. I did not know at the time. What I felt sure of was, that he was not true in the matter; that he knew more about it than he would say. I saw it in his manner; I heard it in his voice; I was sure of it when he gave his evidence afterwards at the inquest. I told my mother this; but she wouldn't listen to me."

"You must have been a strange sort of young gentleman, Frederick!"

"So Mr. Carlton thought, when I told him. You know when he laid that cane about my shoulders, and you assured me, by way of