From within, where Ted Cruttenden stood beside the bed, vaguely remorseful at his own lack of anything save anger, horror, regret, no answer came. "Ted," went on Lord Blackborough, "you must decide. I can go the way you came, and you can call for help. It must be done at once. I'll tell you how it happened so that you may know. We got here about noon. We didn't go into the house. We were--we were in the woods and on the hills----" his voice failed a little, then grew monotonous. "She said it was time to go, and I--I was a fool! I said so too. Just at the corner by the school, a child, a little child, ran in front of the car. She--she called out--and rose. There was a root--oh! Curse the damned thing--it struck her as I swerved. It has left a little blue mark--you can see it on her temple if you look. She never spoke. I brought her back. She was dead." "You say you didn't kill her," burst out Ted, his voice now full of crude anger, grief, hate, "but you did. You brought her here." "Is there any use in recriminations," asked Ned wearily, "you have to decide. And, after all, she--she was no wife for you--you are young yet----" Ted listening, cursed him for repeating the inward thought that had forced itself into his mind. "You have all the world before you--and----" for an instant the voice hesitated as if ashamed, uncertain, then went on. "I had made out a deed of gift to you of a hundred and fifty thousand pounds. It is about all I have left, and the works and all that must go to the heir, you know. You see I meant to disappear, and I meant to take your wife,--so this was just payment. It can be just payment still. I shall not trouble you again. But--but you must decide at once." He stood waiting for a moment or two, his head resting as before upon his upraised arm upon the lintel; then he heard a step, and lifted his eyes to check what he knew all too well would come from Ted's lips. Did he not know it? Was it not the answer of the world where everything even honour had its price? And was it not far better, far wiser? Was it not what he himself desired? "You will find the motor by the bridge," he said quietly. "You had better call some one from the village first, and then the doctor. The children will give evidence, some of them were quite big, and no one at New Park knows anything. Good-bye? I shan't see you again." When Ted had gone, he closed the door, went downstairs, gathered up the tell-tale flowers and fruits which he had brought, climbed to the window-sill and removed the iris, so, putting them all into a basket, went back to the woods. Before the car returned with its first consignment of help, the misty-blue wreaths of the hyacinths, darkening with the dusk, had hidden him. CHAPTER XXVIII He roused himself, for the night was passing. The last twinkling lights--the lights which he had been almost--unconsciously watching in the valley below him--had gone.