The letter dropped from her hand to the floor. She felt her knees give way. She staggered to a sofa and fell upon it. Her eyes closed. She had not fainted, however: the blessing of unconsciousness was denied to her. She could hear through the stillness every word of the conversation that took place between the postman and one of the maids who had been exchanging pots of heath for the porch with the gardener. The postman had clearly brought some piece of news of an enthralling character, for its discussion involved many interjectional comments in the local dialect.

She could hear every word now, though she had not paid any attention to the beginning of the conversation, having been in the act of reading Cyril's letter.

What was it that they were talking about?

A murder?—it must have been a murder. The postman became graphic as he described the nature of the wound. Agnes fancied she could hear the servant breathing hard in compliment to the skill of the narrator. The wound had been caused by a shot—so much was certain—it had struck the victim in the back and he had fallen forward clutching at the grass, “like this,” the narrator said—the pause of a few seconds was filled up by low exclamations of horror.

He was describing the murder of Dick Westwood, Agnes believed; for the details, so far as she heard, applied to that crime. She glanced with an affrighted eye toward Cyril's letter that still lay on the floor—yes, but why should they be talking about the murder of Mr. Westwood upon this day in particular? Why should the postman pause in his round to describe with a skill which only comes of long practice and a thorough acquaintance with the susceptibilities of a rustic audience, a deed which had been described times without number during a period of several months?

“There he lay in his own plantation, and there they found him,” continued the man, when he had illustrated the attitude of the man who was shot. “They found him and thought he was dead. He wasn't, just at that moment, but I heard said that the doctor was ready to take his oath that he couldn't be alive for six hours, so mayhap he's gone to his last long 'count by now, good friends. For Surgeon Ogden is none of the men that pulls a long jaw down at every little matter, whether natural—like females, or more terrifying, of the likes of us—nay, he's ever cheery, as you may know if you've been that fort'nate to come under his hands—ever cheery in hisself, though of course, being polite, he feels hisself bound to be as grave as the gravest when some of their ladyships fancies that there's summat wrong wi' 'em. Ah no; the surgeon is too much the gentleman hisself to make light o' th' ailments o' the nobility, as though they was as humble as us. And to be sure, if you give it a doo consideration, good people, you'll find it quite reasonable and natural-like for him that comes to cure to make out a case to be as evil as possible—'tis on the self-same principle that Tombs, the tailor, makes out that our old coats are terrible far gone when we take 'em to be repaired, so that when he sends 'em home as fresh as new we think a deal of his skill. Ay, and for that matter his reverence the vicar, or even a simple-minded curate, will tell us by the hour how terrible steeped in evil all of us is, so that when he gets one to take the pledge we looks on 'un as a dreadful sharp gentleman to be able to make us presentable. Well, well, him that lies dead this day was mayhap a bit hard, but 'tis a sad fate to fall upon any man; and so God help us all.”

Agnes heard every word that came from the long-winded postman, and the succeeding comments of his auditors. But her attention had not been taken away from the letter which was lying on the floor. It was only because it seemed to her that the subject of the man's story was the same as that of the letter, she had been startled into listening—curiously, eagerly.

But the instant the drone of the man and the long-drawn and wondering sighs of the maid had ceased, she got to her feet—not without an effort—and crossed the room to where the letter was lying. She looked at it for some time before she stooped and picked it up. She went over every line of it again, saying in a whisper the words that it contained. It was a short letter.

Could she by any possibility have misread it the first time? It was a short letter:—

“With what feelings, dear Agnes, will you read this letter! But I feel that I must write it—I should have confessed all to you when I could have done, so face to face, but I was a coward. Often at night aboard the steamer coming out here, I thought upon my guilt, and night by night when in the midst of the great pasturages I have thought over it, and felt how great a ruffian I was, especially as another is suffering for my sin. I cannot endure the stinging of my conscience any longer. Agnes, I must make a clean breast of it to you. Hear me and do not abhor me utterly when I confess to you now that that sin—that crime which came to light in the summer—you will know to what I allude—i cannot name it to you—was mine. I kept my guilt a secret and allowed one who was innocent to suffer for me. Was there ever so base, so cowardly a wretch? I am unworthy to be your brother. Only one way remains to me of making reparation, and you know what that way is. I am coming home by next steamer. Dearest Agnes, can you ever forgive me for the disgrace I have brought upon you? Indeed, I feel that this is the bitterest part of my punishment—the knowledge that I have disgraced our name.

“Cyril.”

She read the letter a second time. It left no loophole of escape for her. Its meaning was but too plain. It appeared in every line. The crime—there was only one crime to which it could refer—there was only one crime for which an innocent man was suffering punishment.

Once again the letter dropped from her hand. She looked at her lingers that had held it as though it had been written with blood that left a stain behind it. For some moments she gazed at the thing lying on the floor at her feet, trying to comprehend all that it meant to her. She felt stunned, as though she had been struck on the head with a heavy weapon. The sense of what that letter meant benumbed her. She was overwhelmed by the force of the blow which she had received.

She stood there in the middle of the room, both her hands pressed against her heart. She could hear its wild beating through the silence. The force of its beating caused her to sway to and fro on her feet.

“It is folly—folly!” she said, as if trying by giving articulation to her thoughts to convince herself against the evidence of her own judgment. “It is folly! He was his friend—Dick Westwood was his friend. Why should he have killed him? He dined at the Court that very night—he—Good God! he was the last to see him alive. Let me think—let me think! What did he say? Yes, he said that Dick had walked across the park with him. He admitted that he was the last person with whom Dick had spoken. Oh, my God—my God! he has written the truth—why should he write anything but the truth? Why should he be mad enough to confess to a crime that he never committed? He killed him, and he is my brother! Oh, fool—fool—that I was! I could not see that that girl was sent through the mercy of God. She was sent here that the man who loved her might be saved from marrying me. But, thank God! I have learned the truth before it is too late.”

And then, as she stood there, she recalled the most trivial incidents of the morning after the murder of Dick Westwood. She remembered how late it was when Cyril had appeared—how he had made excuse after excuse for remaining in bed. In every trivial act of his she perceived such evidence of his guilt that she was amazed that no one had attached suspicion to him. Why, even the fact of his having so eagerly accepted the offer of an appointment on a sheep station in Australia should have made her suspect that he had the gravest of reasons for wishing to get away from the country. She now saw that his anxiety was to leave the scene of his crime behind him.

Then she thought of the days that preceded his escape—that was how she had come to regard his sailing for Australia—how terrible her trouble had been with him. She had felt that he was going to destruction, idling about the tap-rooms of Bracken-hurst, walking with the most disreputable men to be found in the neighbourhood—utterly regardless of appearances and impatient at her remonstrances. Thinking of all this in the light of the confession which she had just read, she was left to wonder how it was possible that she had failed—that every one in Brackenhurst had failed—to attach suspicion to him.

“He did it—he did it!” she whispered.

Once again with a flicker of hope that was more dispiriting than despair, she read the letter, and with a cry of agony fell back upon the sofa and laid her head, face downward, upon one of its arms. Claude Westwood had uttered his curse against the murderer of his brother and against all that pertained to him! She had been horrified at the thought of Clare; but the curse had fallen, and she, Agnes, was crushed beneath it. Her brother was on his way home to pay the penalty of his crime, and Clare—

She got upon her feet, and stood with one hand grasping the back of the sofa, as the thought flashed through her mind: Clare would be happy. There was now no reason why she and Claude might not marry. Even at that moment, when the horror that had rested on Clare's head had been shifted to her own, Agnes felt a thrill of satisfaction when she reflected that it was in her power to give Clare happiness.

She took a step to the bell-rope, but while it was still in her hand, a thought suddenly flashed through her mind: the story which the postman had been telling to the gardener and the maidservant—to what did it refer?—to whom did it refer?

Some one had been shot during the night—so much she had gathered from the rambling discourse of the man; she had not given much attention to all that he had said, but she recollected that it had struck her as singular that the incidents of the matter to which his story referred closely resembled those of the murder of Dick Westwood: the man might have been describing the latter. The victim had, she gathered, been shot in the back, and—what had the man said?—he had been shot in his own grounds. Some one had been shot in his own grounds? Who—who—who?

Why, who could it be but Sir Percival Hope? It could be no one but Sir Percival Hope—the man whom she loved.

That was the terrible thought that swooped down upon her, so to speak—that hawklike thought that struck its talons through her; and at that moment such doubts as might have lingered in her heart were swept away. She now knew that she loved Sir Percival Hope, who was lying at the point of death, if the man who had come with the story had spoken the truth.

“Thank Heaven—thank Heaven that he knew the truth before he died; thank Heaven that he knew I loved him; and thank Heaven that he died before he could know that other truth—that we could never be anything more to each other than we were. I should have had to tell him that—all that that letter has told to me. But I have still to tell some one of it. Who is it—who is it?”

Her brain was whirling. She had forgotten for the moment that Clare had to be made happy; and some moments had passed before the sight of the bell-rope brought back her thoughts to the object which she had originally before her in going to it. She rang the bell, and when the butler appeared she had her voice sufficiently under control to ask him to tell her maid to find Miss Tristram and send her to the drawing-room.

As the butler was leaving the room she said—and now her voice was not quite so firm as it had been:

“I heard the postman telling some story to the gardener just now. Has some one been hurt?”

The man did not answer for a second or two, but that space was sufficient to send her thoughts wandering once more on a different track.

“Merciful Heaven!” she cried. “It cannot be possible that it is Mr. Westwood who was shot, as his brother was—within his own grounds?”

“Oh no, ma'am, it's not so bad as that,” replied the butler. “So far as I hear, it was the poachers that have been about Westwood Court one night and the Abbey Woods another night for the past month. It seems that Ralph Dangan, Sir Percival Hope's new keeper—-him that was at the Court for so long—he came upon them suddenly last night and they shot him. The story is that the poor man was not likely to live longer than a few hours.” Agnes gave a sigh—she wondered if the butler would know that it was a sigh of relief rather than one of sympathy for the unhappy man who had been shot.

“Poor fellow!” she said. “I hope his daughter has been sent for.”

“I didn't hear anything in that way, ma'am,” said the butler. “If she went to Sir Percival's sister, he will know her address, but they say that poor Dangan always refused to see her, though she was a good daughter except for her one slip.”

He left the room, and Agnes sat wondering how it was that she had been led to feel with such certainty that the story of the man who was shot referred to Sir Percival. And in its turn this question of hers became a terror to her, for in her condition of excitement she had lost all capacity to judge of incidents in an unprejudiced way. The condition of her brain caused her to distort every matter which she tried to consider on its merits.

She waited so long without any one appearing that she had actually forgotten what was the object of her waiting, and she was surprised when her maid came into the room saying:

“I cannot find Miss Tristram in the house, Miss Mowbray. I think she must have gone out for a walk by the lower gate; she could not have left by the drive without my seeing her, for I was sitting at the window of the workroom sewing.”