Sylvia went out again. The men heard the rattle of dishes. Horace
rose with a heavy sigh, which was almost a sob, and went out by the
hall door, and Henry heard his retreating steps on the stair. He
frowned deeply as he sat by the window. He, too, was bearing in some
measure the burden of which he had spoken. It seemed to him very
strange that under the circumstances Horace had not explained his
mysterious meeting with the woman in the grove north of the house the
night before. Henry had a certainty as to her identity--a certainty
which he could not explain to himself, but which was none the less
fixed.

No suspicion of Horace, as far as the murder was concerned--if murder
it was--was in his mind, but he did entertain a suspicion of another
sort: of some possibly guilty secret which might have led to the
tragedy. "I couldn't feel worse if he was my own son," he thought. He
wished desperately that he had gone out in the grove and interrupted
the interview. "I'm old enough to be his father," he told himself,
"and I know what young men are. I'm to blame myself."

When he heard Horace's approaching footsteps on the stair he turned
his face stiffly towards the window, and did not look up when the
young man entered the room. But Horace sat down opposite and began
speaking rapidly in a low voice.

"I don't know but I ought to go to Mr. Meeks with this instead of
you," he said; "and I don't know that I ought to go to anybody, but,
hang it, I can't keep the little I know to myself any longer--that
is, I can't keep the whole of it. Some I never will tell. Mr.
Whitman, I don't know the exact minute Miss Hart gave her that