"We will have this out, Selina. It is not the first time you have given utterance to hints that you ought to be ashamed of. Do you suspect that I shot Philip King?" His tone was so stern that, perhaps, she did not like to say "yes" outright, and tampered with the question. "Not exactly that. But there's only your word to prove that it was George Heneage. And you know how incensed you have latterly been against him!" "Who caused me to be incensed? Why, you." "There was no real cause. Were it the last words I had to speak, Edwin"—and she burst into tears—"were I dying, I would assert it. I never cared for George Heneage in the way you fancy." "_I_ fancy! Had I fancied that, I should have flung George Heneage out of my house long ago," was his rejoinder, spoken calmly. "But now, hear me, Selina. It has been your pleasure to declare so much to me. On my part, I declare to you that Heneage, and Heneage only, killed Philip King. Dispossess your mind of all dark folly. You must be insane, I think, to take it up against your husband." "Did you see Heneage fire?" she asked, after a silence. "No. I should have known pretty surely that it could only be Heneage, had there been no proof against him; but there were Philip's dying words. Still, I did not see Heneage at the place, and I have never said I did. I was pushing home through the wood, and halted a second, thinking I heard voices: it must have been Philip talking to the child: at that very moment a shot was fired close to me—close, mind you—not two yards off; but the trees are thick just there, and whoever fired it was hid from my view. I was turning to search, when Philip King's awful scream rang out, and I pushed my head beyond the trees and saw him in the act of falling to the ground. I hastened to him, and the other escaped. This is the entire truth, so far as I am cognizant of it." It might have been the truth; and, again, it might not. It was just one of those things that depend upon the credibility of the utterer. What little corroboration there was, certainly was on Mr. Edwin Barley's side: _only_ that he had asserted more than was true of the dying words of Philip King. If these were the simple facts, the truth, why have added falsehood to them? "Heneage could have had no motive to take the life of Philip King," argued Mrs. Edwin Barley. "That he would have caned him, or given him some other sound chastisement, I grant you—and richly he deserved it, for he was the cause of all the ill-feeling that had arisen in the house—but, to kill him! No, no!" "And yet you would deem me capable of it!" "I am not accusing you. But when you come to speak of motives, I cannot help seeing that George Heneage could have had none." "You have just observed that the author of the mischief, the bad feeling which had sprung up in the house, was Philip King; but you are wrong. The author was you, Selina." No answer. She put up one of her hot hands, and shaded her eyes.