"She killed him—murdered him—just as surely as if she had shot him. Do let me tell the story in my own way. I hardly know the ins and outs of it, but it seems that the house really belongs to Major Urquhart—at least, she gives out that it does, and your mother told me that the Admiral would not fight his brother about it, but that it was morally, if not legally, his. Mrs. Ted has turned Sidney out of her place at the head of the table. She took the reins of the whole house in her own hands; she moved and changed everything in it on purpose to annoy them. She took the Admiral's books and pictures away from his study, and said they belonged to the Major, and she furnished a new smoking-room with all his treasured things. The Admiral and Sidney at last, in despair, went up to London. They were driven out of the house by her. When they came back she was worse than ever. She had cut down all the Admiral's favourite trees, and in spite of the Major's protests, got some labourers to come up and clear away the guns from the lawn. That was the last straw! The poor old Admiral went out the morning after he came home, and found them half buried in an old rubbish ditch. It broke his heart, and he was found dead, clasping his arms round one of them. Now, what do you call that but murder?" Austin drew in a long breath of dismay. "Gracious, child, go more slowly! I can't quite believe that Mrs. Norman would act so." "Mrs. Edward Urquhart, please. And you need not address me as 'child.' I shall shut up if you do." "Beg pardon. Go ahead." "Well, of course, dear Sidney has behaved like an angel. We wanted her to leave the house at once, but she would stay on until the lawyer and she had sorted out all her father's papers and put the business straight. What she's gone through no one knows! She's a marvel to all of us. I have heard Mrs. Ted stinging at her like a gnat, and Sidney speaks to her in the most gracious and sweet way, but in a lovely remote tone, as if she hardly knows who she is, and she lives in another world just now. She looks lovelier than ever in her black, but so frail and delicate. And then sometimes she puts her hand on my arm and laughs in her old fascinating way, and then the dreamy sad veil falls over her eyes again. Miss Pembroke wants to have her, and your mother wants to have her, but neither has got her yet. Sometimes I think she stays on for the Major's sake. He's awfully unhappy—I can see it in his eyes; he's a broken-down old man since the Admiral's death, and his wife does nothing but whip him on, as if he were a tired old horse. Oh, she's an awful woman! If only you had married her!" "Thank you," said Austin stiffly; then he added: "How women hate one another! I can hardly recognise Mrs. Norman under your description. I never heard her say an unkind word to anyone."