Coventry drew back dismayed. His guilty conscience misinterpreted this.
"You can forgive us now," said Grace, with a deep sob: then turned away with sullen listlessness, and continued her sad scrutiny.
Coventry loved her, after his fashion, and her mute but eloquent misery moved him.
He drew nearer to her, and said softly, "Do not look so; I can't bear it. He is not there."
"Ah! How do you know?"
Coventry was silent for a moment, and seemed uneasy; but at last he replied thus: "There were two explosions. The chimney fell into the river a moment before the explosion that blew up the works. So how can he be buried under the ruins of the chimney? I know this from a workman who was standing on the bridge when the explosions took place."
Bless the tongue that tells me that! Oh, how much wiser you are than the rest of us! Mr. Coventry, pity and forgive a poor girl who has used you ill. Tell me--tell me--what can have become of him?"
Coventry was much agitated, and could not speak for some time, and when he did, it was in a faint voice as of one exhausted by a mental struggle. "Would you rather he was--dead--or--false?"
"Oh false--a thousand times! Prove to me he is not dead, but only false to his poor Grace, and I will bless you on my knees."
Coventry's eye flashed. "Well, then, he was the lover of Jael Dence, the girl who fought for him, and shed her blood for him, and saved his life. The connection was open and notorious."
Grace was silent.
"Many a man has fled from two women, who could have been happy with either of them. I believe that this man found himself unable to play the double game any longer, and that he has fled the country--"
"I pray God it may be so," sobbed Grace.
"--Through remorse, or from dread of exposure. Have patience. Do not kill yourself, and break all our hearts. Take my word for it, you will hear from him in a few days, and he will give your reasons for his strange disappearance--excellent, business-like reasons, but not the true ones: there will not be a word about Jael Dence." This last with a sneer.
Grace turned on him with eyes that literally gleamed: "You hated him living, you slander him dead. Falsehood was not in him: his affection for Jael Dence was no secret. I knew it, and approved it.
It was as pure as heaven. His poor mutilated body will soon contradict these vile calumnies. I hate you! I hate you!"
Coventry drew back at first from this burst of ire, but soon he met her glance with one of fiendish bitterness. "You hate me for pitying you, and saying that man is not dead. Well, have your own way, then; he is not false, but dead."
He turned on his heel, and went away.
As for Mr. Carden, he declined to admit that Little was dead, and said his conduct was unpardonable, and, indeed, so nearly resembled madness, that, considering the young man's father had committed suicide, he was determined never to admit him into his house again--at all events as a suitor to Grace.
Mr. Coventry had now taken spacious apartments, and furnished them.
He resumed his visits to the club. Mr. Carden met him there, and spoke more confidentially to him than he did to his daughter, and admitted he had grave doubts, but said he was a director of the Gosshawk, and would never, either in public or private, allow that Little was dead unless his body should be found and properly identified.
All this time there was a hot discussion in the journals, and the Saw-grinders' Union repudiated the outrage with horror, and offered a considerable reward.
Outsiders were taken in by this, but not a single manufacturer or workman.
Mr. Holdfast denounced it as a Trade outrage, and Ransome groped the town for evidence.
The latter, however, was rather puzzled one day by an anonymous letter telling him he was all on the wrong tack; it was not a Trade job, but contrived by a gentleman for his private ends. Advantage had been taken of Little being wrong with the Trade; "but," said the letter, "you should look to the head for the motive, not to the hands. One or two saw them together a good many times before the deed was done, and the swell was seen on the very bridge when the explosion took place."
This set Ransome thinking very seriously and comparing notes.
Week after week went by and left the mystery unsolved.