Chapter XXII - Page 2

notion of her being responsible for the crime as definitely as an aged saint of habitually grave speech can be expected to pooh-pooh at all. He said she was not responsible. He said, when his wife with all the emphasis apparently inseparable from the conversation of those who feel strongly, told him that he owed it to himself, to his parish, to his country, to go and accuse her, that he owed no man anything but to love one another. There was nothing to be done with the vicar. Still these scenes had not left him scathless, and it was a vicar moved to the utmost limits of his capacity in that direction who went into the pulpit that day repeating the question "Who is it?" so insistently, so appealingly, with such searching glances along the rows of faces in the pews, that the congregation, shuffling and uncomfortable, looked furtively at each other with an ever growing suspicion and dislike. The vicar as he went on waxing warmer, more insistent, observed at least a dozen persons with guilt on every feature. It darted out like a toad from the hiding-place of some private ooze at the bottom of each soul into one face after the other; and there was a certain youth who grew so visibly in guilt, who had so many beads of an obviously guilty perspiration on his forehead, and eyes so guiltily starting from their sockets, that only by a violent effort of self-control could the vicar stop himself from pointing at him and shouting out then and there "Thou art the man!"

Meanwhile the real murderer had hired a waggonette and was taking his wife for a pleasant country drive.

It was to pacify Fritzing that Priscilla came down to breakfast. Left to herself she would by preference never have breakfasted again. She even drank more milk to please him; but though it might please him, no amount of milk could wash out the utter blackness of her spirit. He, seeing her droop behind the jug, seeing her gazing drearily at nothing in particular, jumped up and took a book from the shelves and without more ado began to read aloud. "It is better, ma'am," he explained briefly, glancing at her over his spectacles, "than that you should give yourself over to gloom."

Priscilla turned vague eyes on to him. "How can I help gloom?" she asked.

"Yes, yes, that may be. But nobody should be gloomy at breakfast. The entire day is very apt, in consequence, to be curdled."

"It will be curdled anyhow," said Priscilla, her head sinking on to her chest.

"Ma'am, listen to this."

And with a piece of bread and butter in one hand, from which he took occasional hurried bites, and the other raised in appropriate varying gesticulation, Fritzing read portions of the Persae of Aeschylus to her, first in Greek for the joy of his own ear and then translating it into English for the edification of hers. He, at least, was off after the first line, sailing