to Australia. She spared a minute to grief for Daisy, but
her own sorrow would not be denied, and engrossed her again. In the
solitude she had sought, she cried to herself, "Why didn't they tell me
before? What's the use of telling me now?" Then she would fly back to
the hope that the thing was not true, that her friends had clutched too
hastily at anything which would save her from what they dreaded, and,
she confessed to herself, rightly dreaded. No, she would not believe it
yet; and, if it were not true, why should she not be happy? Why should
she not, even though she did what Dick had not dared to do, and what,
when Coxon asked her, she had laughed at for an absurdity?

There began to be more movement outside the gates. The first note of
band-music was wafted to her ear, and the roll of wheels announced the
return of the church-goers. She roused herself and went to meet them.
They were agog with excitement, partly about the meeting, partly about
the murder. While Eleanor was trying to tell her of the state of
popular feeling, the Governor seized her arm and began to detail the
story of the discovery.

"You remember the man?" he asked. "He was at our flower-show--had a sort
of row with Medland, you know. Well, he's been found murdered (so the
police think) in a low part of the town! The woman who keeps the house
found him. He didn't come down in the morning, and, as she couldn't make
him hear, she forced the door, and found him with his throat cut."

"Awful!" shuddered Lady Eynesford. "He looked such a respectable man
too."

"Ah, I fancy he'd gone a bit to the bad lately--taken to drinking and so
on."

"He was a friend of Mr. Kilshaw's, wasn't he?" asked Alicia.

"A sort of hanger-on, I think. Anyhow, there he was dead, and with his
pockets empty."

"Perhaps he killed himself," she suggested.

"They think not. They've arrested the woman, but she declares she knows
nothing about it!"

"Poor man!" said Alicia; and, at another time, she might have thought a
good deal about the horrible end of a man whom she had known as an
acquaintance. But, as it was, she soon forgot him again, and, leaving
the rest, returned to her solitary seat.

In the town, the news of the murder was but one ruffle more on the wave
of excitement, and not a very marked one. Few people knew Benham's
name, and when the first agitation following on the discovery of the
body died away and the onlookers found there was no news to be had, the