The inspector bowed but did not speak. The lady standing before

him showed no emotion, no fluttering fear, no anxiety, no desire

to end the interview. The information he had received was very

vague; one of the porters, rushing out to be in readiness for the

train, had seen a scuffle, at the other end of the platform,

between Leonards and a gentleman accompanied by a lady, but heard

no noise; and before the train had got to its full speed after

starting, he had been almost knocked down by the headlong run of

the enraged half intoxicated Leonards, swearing and cursing

awfully. He had not thought any more about it, till his evidence

was routed out by the inspector, who, on making some farther

inquiry at the railroad station, had heard from the

station-master that a young lady and gentleman had been there

about that hour--the lady remarkably handsome--and said, by some

grocer's assistant present at the time, to be a Miss Hale, living

at Crampton, whose family dealt at his shop. There was no

certainty that the one lady and gentleman were identical with the

other pair, but there was great probability. Leonards himself had

gone, half-mad with rage and pain, to the nearest gin-palace for

comfort; and his tipsy words had not been attended to by the busy

waiters there; they, however, remembered his starting up and

cursing himself for not having sooner thought of the electric

telegraph, for some purpose unknown; and they believed that he

left with the idea of going there. On his way, overcome by pain

or drink, he had lain down in the road, where the police had

found him and taken him to the Infirmary: there he had never

recovered sufficient consciousness to give any distinct account

of his fall, although once or twice he had had glimmerings of

sense sufficient to make the authorities send for the nearest

magistrate, in hopes that he might be able to take down the dying

man's deposition of the cause of his death. But when the

magistrate had come, he was rambling about being at sea, and

mixing up names of captains and lieutenants in an indistinct

manner with those of his fellow porters at the railway; and his

last words were a curse on the 'Cornish trick' which had, he

said, made him a hundred pounds poorer than he ought to have

been. The inspector ran all this over in his mind--the vagueness

of the evidence to prove that Margaret had been at the

station--the unflinching, calm denial which she gave to such a

supposition. She stood awaiting his next word with a composure

that appeared supreme.




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