Agatha Webb | Page 6

She had not a good voice and
she knew it; but she covered up this defect by a choice of intonations
that carried her lightest speech to the heart. Hard-visaged Amos Fenton
gave a grunt, which was as near an expression of approval as he ever
gave to anyone.
"Well! well!" he growled, but not ill-naturedly, "it's a morbid curiosity
that brings you here. Better drop it, girl; it won't do you any good in the
eyes of sensible people."
"Thank you," was her demure reply, her lips dimpling at the corners in
a way to shock the sensitive Mr. Sutherland.
Glancing from her to the still outlines of the noble figure on the couch,
he remarked with an air of mild reproof:
"I do not understand you, Miss Page. If this solemn sight has no power
to stop your coquetries, nothing can. As for your curiosity, it is both
ill-timed and unwomanly. Let me see you leave this house at once,
Miss Page; and if in the few hours which must elapse before breakfast
you can find time to pack your trunks, you will still farther oblige me."
"Oh, don't send me away, I entreat you."
It was a cry from her inner heart, which she probably regretted, for she
instantly sought to cover up her inadvertent self-betrayal by a

submissive bend of the head and a step backward. Neither Mr. Fenton
nor Mr. Sutherland seemed to hear the one or see the other, their
attention having returned to the more serious matter in hand.
"The dress which our poor friend wears shows her to have been struck
before retiring," commented Mr. Sutherland, after another short survey
of Mrs. Webb's figure. "If Philemon--"
"Excuse me, sir," interrupted the voice of the young man who had been
left in the hall, "the lady is listening to what you say. She is still at the
head of the stairs."
"She is, is she!" cried Fenton, sharply, his admiration for the
fascinating stranger having oozed out at his companion's rebuff. "I will
soon show her--" But the words melted into thin air as he reached the
door. The young girl had disappeared, and only a faint perfume
remained in the place where she had stood.
"A most extraordinary person," grumbled the constable, turning back,
but stopping again as a faint murmur came up from below.
"The gentleman is waking," called up a voice whose lack of music was
quite perceptible at a distance.
With a bound Mr. Fenton descended the stairs, followed by Mr.
Sutherland.
Miss Page stood before the door of the room in which sat Philemon
Webb. As they reached her side, she made a little bow that was half
mocking, half deprecatory, and slipped from the house. An almost
unbearable sensation of incongruity vanished with her, and Mr.
Sutherland, for one, breathed like a man relieved.
"I wish the doctor would come," Fenton said, as they watched the slow
lifting of Philemon Webb's head. "Our fastest rider has gone for him,
but he's out Portchester way, and it may be an hour yet before he can
get here."

"Philemon!"
Mr. Sutherland had advanced and was standing by his old friend's side.
"Philemon, what has become of your guests? You've waited for them
here until morning."
The old man with a dazed look surveyed the two plates set on either
side of him and shook his head.
"James and John are getting proud," said he, "or they forget, they
forget."
James and John. He must mean the Zabels, yet there were many others
answering to these names in town. Mr. Sutherland made another effort.
"Philemon, where is your wife? I do not see any place set here for her!"
"Agatha's sick, Agatha's cross; she don't care for a poor old man like
me."
"Agatha's dead and you know it," thundered back the constable, with
ill-judged severity. "Who killed her? tell me that. Who killed her?"
A sudden quenching of the last spark of intelligence in the old man's
eye was the dreadful effect of these words. Laughing with that strange
gurgle which proclaims an utterly irresponsible mind, he cried:
"The pussy cat! It was the pussy cat. Who's killed? I'm not killed. Let's
go to Jericho."
Mr. Sutherland took him by the arm and led him up-stairs. Perhaps the
sight of his dead wife would restore him. But he looked at her with the
same indifference he showed to everything else.
"I don't like her calico dresses," said he. "She might have worn silk, but
she wouldn't. Agatha, will you wear silk to my funeral?"
The experiment was too painful, and they drew him away. But the

constable's curiosity had been roused, and after they had found some
one to take care of him, he drew Mr. Sutherland aside and said:
"What did