"Dr. Morris, you look ill. I am so sorry!"
"I have been feeling ill," the man responded. "But the touch of your hand, the sound of your voice will do more than anything to help me, Miss Hilary. They show me that you do not—cannot believe—"
Miss Lavinia's first glance had been distinctly hostile, but something in his tone, in his words, touched her heart, which was soft enough in spite of her hard exterior. She, too, held out her hand.
"You look as if country air was what you needed, Dr. Morris. You are shutting yourself up too much in smoky London, I expect. I have found the difference myself since we came up from Rose Cottage. But now, Hilary, we must not keep Fee waiting."
Sanford Morris was quick to take the hint. The look of gratitude in his dark eyes was pathetic as he turned away.
Miss Lavinia and Hilary went to the sitting-room in silence. At the door Hilary paused.
"I will be back in a minute when I have taken my hat off, Aunt Lavinia. In the meantime perhaps it would be as well if you told Fee why you wanted me to go to church."
She went on to her own room. Hardly knowing what she was doing, she closed and bolted the door, and then stood absolutely motionless staring straight in front of her. Certain words seemed to beat upon her brain like hammers.
"Basil Godfrey Wilton, bachelor... Iris Mary Houlton, spinster... If any of you know just cause or impediment..."
But of course it was not just cause or impediment that Basil Wilton had asked another girl to marry him, that he had betrayed her faith—he was free, quite free to marry Iris Houlton if he liked. And he was going to. He cared for Iris Houlton. He had forgotten her—Hilary. Or stay—had he forgotten? Or had Iris Houlton's money tempted him—who was it who had said that she was very rich? She had not been rich when Hilary knew her; she had been poor and sly—oh, very sly! Hilary had always felt that. Then, as she stood there, one little corner of the curtain of thick fog that seemed to have descended on her brain was lifted for a moment and she visualized the future. Always when she had pictured the long years ahead of her she had seen herself as Basil Wilton's wife, and the life had been enwrapped in a golden haze. Now, now she must put even the very thought of Basil from her—not only would he never belong to her but he would belong to another woman—body and soul. Standing there a sudden wave of passion surged over her. A couple of hours ago she would not have believed herself capable of the feelings that possessed her. Her brown eyes were wide open and the pupils were dilated until the whole eye looked black. Her lips were pressed tightly together, while her nostrils were quivering like those of a thoroughbred horse.
There came a tap at the door. Her aunt's voice:
"Hilary! Hilary!"
She tried to answer, but for a time no words would come from her dry, parched lips. The knocking went on, the insistent calling, Miss Lavinia's voice growing alarmed as she received no reply. At last with a hoarse indrawing of her breath Hilary recovered her voice:
"What is it, Aunt Lavinia? What do you want?"
"Sir Felix is here," Miss Lavinia answered in a voice unusually shaken. "He wants to see you, to talk to you about Fee."
Chapter XIII
"Terrible Murder in the West End! Bride found dead in flat. Disappearance of Bridegroom."
"Good God!" Miss Lavinia uttered a sharp exclamation of horror, threw her copy of the "Daily Wire" on the floor, and sat back in her chair, her face for once noticeably paler in hue.
Hilary looked up from her toast and marmalade.
"What is the matter, Aunt Lavinia?"
The two were at breakfast in the cosy little dining-room at Rose Cottage. They had come back to Heathcote the week before. Nothing had yet been settled with regard to Fee's cure, which seemed to become more expensive in prospect every time it was mentioned.
Dr. Blathwayte himself had suggested the return to the country. Fee was in no condition to undergo his very strenuous treatment yet, a few months in the pure country air were needed to establish the boy's health before anything could be attempted. So that now a change had come over Fee. Instead of declining to go into the garden at all, he insisted on sitting on the lawn all day, and even on days which Hilary considered risky.
Miss Lavinia was apparently too much overcome to speak for a minute; she pointed dramatically to the paper lying on the table in front of her.
"It—it is the girl!" she ejaculated at last.
"What is the girl? Who do you mean? Mary Ann Taylor—what has she been doing?" Hilary demanded.
"Not Mary Anne Taylor—Iris Houlton. She has been killed—murdered—in her flat at Hawksview Mansions," Miss Lavinia gasped. "I—I never heard of such a thing! What are we coming to, I should like to know?"
"What!" Hilary, who had been coming round to her aunt, caught the paper up from the floor. "She—she cannot be—"
"Terrible Murder in the West End!"
The headlines loomed large on the front page, and with a sickening feeling of dread Hilary read on.
Late last night a terrible discovery was made in Hawksview Mansions, a fashionable block of flats in the West End. A maid, living with a young, recently-married couple named Wilton in a large self-contained flat on the second floor, found herself unable to get in or to make anybody hear on her return from her day out. She informed the porter who, while stating that he had seen nothing of Mr. and Mrs. Wilton going out or coming in, advised her to wait, as they had probably come down without his observing them, and gone to some theatre or dancing place. The girl took his advice, after stating that, as Mr. Wilton was more or less of an invalid, she should have thought they would have been more likely to spend a quiet evening at home. But as time went on and there was no sign of the missing couple, the maid, Alice Downes, began to get seriously alarmed. The porter went off duty at 10.30, and before leaving he went up to the flat with the girl. At the flat door nothing could be ascertained but that the flat was apparently empty, since there came no reply to their loud knocking and ringing. At last, the porter, putting his eye to the keyhole to try whether anything could be seen of the interior of the flat, made the discovery that the key was in the lock on the inside. The caretaker was at once summoned and the police were rung up. Without further delay the door of the flat was forced and in the drawing-room, a room to the right of the entrance, the body of Mrs. Wilton was found lying on the hearthrug. It was thought at first that death was the result of an accident, as the head was lying on the steel curb and blood had apparently flowed freely on to the tiled hearth, but the medical evidence showed that Mrs. Wilton had been shot twice, once from the front, the bullet from this passing through the body without killing the victim, who probably fell backwards, hitting her head on the curb. Seeing that his terrible work was still unfinished, the murderer appears to have deliberately shot her through the ear. Death, according to the reports, must have taken place soon after five o'clock, directly after the maid had gone out. An extraordinary feature of the case is that the husband, Mr. Basil Wilton, has apparently disappeared, and, at the time of going to press, no clue to his whereabouts has been discovered. Portraits of the victim and of the scene of the tragedy are on the back page.
Then, lower down on the same page came another paragraph in the latest news:
The maid, Alice Downes, on being interrogated, stated that her mistress and Mr. Basil Wilton had only been married about a fortnight, though for some weeks past the latter had been living at the flat. According to Miss Downes he was a delicate gentleman and Miss