Mrs. Ansell looked at him with growing perturbation. "Saved--Bessy's
life? But how? By whom?"

"She might have been allowed to live, I mean--to recover. She was
killed, Maria; that woman killed her!"

Mrs. Ansell, with another cry of bewilderment, let herself drop
helplessly into the nearest chair. "In heaven's name, Henry--what
woman?"

He seated himself opposite to her, clutching at his stick, and leaning
his weight heavily on it--a white dishevelled old man. "I wonder why you
ask--just to spare me?"

Their eyes met in a piercing exchange of question and answer, and Mrs.
Ansell tried to bring out reasonably: "I ask in order to understand what
you are saying."

"Well, then, if you insist on keeping up appearances--my daughter-in-law
killed my daughter. There you have it." He laughed silently, with a tear
on his reddened eye-lids.

Mrs. Ansell groaned. "Henry, you are raving--I understand less and
less."

"I don't see how I can speak more plainly. She told me so herself, in
this room, not an hour ago."

"She told you? Who told you?"

"John Amherst's wife. Told me she'd killed my child. It's as easy as
breathing--if you know how to use a morphia-needle."

Light seemed at last to break on his hearer. "Oh, my poor Henry--you
mean--she gave too much? There was some dreadful accident?"

"There was no accident. She killed my child--killed her deliberately.
Don't look at me as if I were a madman. She sat in that chair you're in
when she told me."

"Justine? Has she been here today?" Mrs. Ansell paused in a painful
effort to readjust her thoughts. "But _why_ did she tell you?"

"That's simple enough. To prevent Wyant's doing it."

"Oh----" broke from his hearer, in a long sigh of fear and intelligence.
Mr. Langhope looked at her with a smile of miserable exultation.

"You knew--you suspected all along?--But now you must speak out!" he
exclaimed with a sudden note of command.

She sat motionless, as if trying to collect herself. "I know nothing--I
only meant--why was this never known before?"

He was upon her at once. "You think--because they understood each other?
And now there's been a break between them? He wanted too big a share of
the spoils? Oh, it's all so abysmally vile!"

He covered his face with a shaking hand, and Mrs. Ansell remained
silent, plunged in a speechless misery of conjecture. At length she
regained some measure of her habitual composure, and leaning forward,
with her eyes on his f