She got upon her feet, and stood with one hand grasping the back of the sofa, as the thought flashed through her mind: Clare would be happy. There was now no reason why she and Claude might not marry. Even at that moment, when the horror that had rested on Clare's head had been shifted to her own, Agnes felt a thrill of satisfaction when she reflected that it was in her power to give Clare happiness. She took a step to the bell-rope, but while it was still in her hand, a thought suddenly flashed through her mind: the story which the postman had been telling to the gardener and the maidservant--to what did it refer?--to whom did it refer? Some one had been shot during the night--so much she had gathered from the rambling discourse of the man; she had not given much attention to all that he had said, but she recollected that it had struck her as singular that the incidents of the matter to which his story referred closely resembled those of the murder of Dick Westwood: the man might have been describing the latter. The victim had, she gathered, been shot in the back, and--what had the man said?--he had been shot in his own grounds. Some one had been shot in his own grounds? Who--who--who? Why, who could it be but Sir Percival Hope? It could be no one but Sir Percival Hope--the man whom she loved. That was the terrible thought that swooped down upon her, so to speak--that hawklike thought that struck its talons through her; and at that moment such doubts as might have lingered in her heart were swept away. She now knew that she loved Sir Percival Hope, who was lying at the point of death, if the man who had come with the story had spoken the truth. “Thank Heaven--thank Heaven that he knew the truth before he died; thank Heaven that he knew I loved him; and thank Heaven that he died before he could know that other truth--that we could never be anything more to each other than we were. I should have had to tell him that--all that that letter has told to me. But I have still to tell some one of it. Who is it--who is it?” Her brain was whirling. She had forgotten for the moment that Clare had to be made happy; and some moments had passed before the sight of the bell-rope brought back her thoughts to the object which she had originally before her in going to it. She rang the bell, and when the butler appeared she had her voice sufficiently under control to ask him to tell her maid to find Miss Tristram and send her to the drawing-room. As the butler was leaving the room she said--and now her voice was not quite so firm as it had been: “I heard the postman telling some story to the gardener just now. Has some one been hurt?” The man did not answer for a second or two, but that space was sufficient to send her thoughts wandering once more on a different track. “Merciful Heaven!” she cried. “It cannot be possible that it is Mr. Westwood who was shot, as his brother was--within his own grounds?”