"What is it?" she cried.
"Murder!" they answered with one voice, and sped on towards Bryngelly.
Another moment and Elizabeth was at hand, horror written on her pale face.
Beatrice clutched at her. "Who is it?" she cried.
"Mr. Bingham," gasped her sister. "Go and help; he's shot dead!" And she too was gone.
Beatrice's knees loosened, her tongue clave to the roof of her mouth; the solid earth spun round and round. "Geoffrey killed! Geoffrey killed!" she cried in her heart; but though her ears seemed to hear the sound of them, no words came from her lips. "Oh, what should she do? Where should she hide herself in her grief?"
A few yards from the path grew a stunted tree with a large flat stone at its root. Thither Beatrice staggered and sank upon the stone, while still the solid earth spun round and round.
Presently her mind cleared a little, and a keener pang of pain shot through her soul. She had been stunned at first, now she felt.
"Perhaps it was not true; perhaps Elizabeth had been mistaken or had only said it to torment her." She rose. She flung herself upon her knees, there by the stone, and prayed, this first time for many years--she prayed with all her soul. "Oh, God, if Thou art, spare him his life and me this agony." In her dreadful pangs of grief her faith was thus re-born, and, as all human beings must in their hour of mortal agony, Beatrice realised her dependence on the Unseen. She rose, and weak with emotion sank back on to the stone. The people were streaming past her now, talking excitedly. Somebody came up to her and stood over her.
Oh, Heaven, it was Geoffrey!
"Is it you?" she gasped. "Elizabeth said that you were murdered."
"No, no. It was not I; it is that poor fellow Johnson, the auctioneer. Jones shot him. I was standing next him. I suppose your sister thought that I fell. He was not unlike me, poor fellow."
Beatrice looked at him, went red, went white, then burst into a flood of tears.
A strange pang seized upon his heart. It thrilled through him, shaking him to the core. Why was this woman so deeply moved? Could it be----? Nonsense; he stifled the thought before it was born.
"Don't cry," Geoffrey said, "the people will see you, Beatrice" (for the first time he called her by her christian name); "pray do not cry. It distresses me. You are upset, and no wonder. That fellow Beecham Bones ought to be hanged, and I told him so. It is his work, though he never meant it to go so far. He's frightened enough now, I can tell you."