That night Richard Linnell was standing with his teeth set, his throat dry, and a feeling of despair making his heart seem to sink, watching the white hand that was waved as soon as the sash was opened. Half blind with the blood that seemed to rush to his eyes, he glared at the window. Then a sudden revulsion of feeling came over him as a familiar voice that was not Claire's cried, "Help!--a doctor!" and then the speaker seemed to stagger away. The rest was to Richard Linnell like some dream of horror, regarding which he recalled the next morning that he had thundered at the door, that he had helped to carry Claire to her room, and that he had afterwards been one of the group who stood waiting in the dining-room until the doctor came down to announce that Miss Denville was better-- that Lady Teigne was quite dead. Then they had stolen out on tiptoe, and in the stillness of the early morning shaken hands all round and separated, the Major remaining with them, and walking with Colonel Mellersh and Richard Linnell to their door. "What a horror!" he said hoarsely. "I would not for the world have taken you two there had I known. Good-night--good-morning, I should say;" and he, too, said those words--perhaps originated the saying--"What a ghastly serenade!" Nine days--they could spare no more in Saltinville, for it would have spoiled the season--nine days' wonder, and then the news that a certain royal person was coming down, news blown by the trumpet of Fame with her attendants, raised up enough wind to sweep away the memory of the horror on the Parade. "She was eighty if she was a day," said Sir Matthew Bray: "and it was quite time the old wretch did die." "Nice way of speaking of a lady whose relative you are seeking to be," said Sir Harry Payne. "Sweet old nymph. How do you make it fit, Matt?" "Fit? Some scoundrel of a London tramp scaled the balcony, they say. Fine plunder, the rascal! All those diamonds." "Which she might have left her sister, and then perhaps they would have come to you, Matt." "Don't talk stuff." "Stuff? Why, you are besieging the belle. But, I say, I have my own theory about that murder." "Eh, have you?" cried the great dragoon, staring open-mouthed. "Egad! yes, Matt. It was not a contemptible robbery." "Wasn't it? You don't say so." "But I do," cried Sir Harry seriously. "Case of serious jealousy on the part of some lover of the bewitching creature. He came in the dead o' night and smothered the Desdemona with a pillow. What do you say, Rockley?" The Major had strolled across the mess-room and heard these words. "Bah! Don't ridicule the matter," he said. "Change the subject." "As you like, but the feeble flame only wanted a momentary touch of the extinguisher and it was gone." At the house on the Parade there had been terrible anguish, and Claire Denville suffered painfully as she passed through the ordeal of the examination that ensued.