She was sitting by the body on the floor when she heard steps coming with rushing and yet cautious tread, through the shrubbery; she had no fear, although it might be the tread of robbers and murderers.  The awfulness of the hour raised her above common fears; though she did not go through the usual process of reasoning, and by it feel assured that the feet which were coming so softly and swiftly along were the same which she had heard leaving the room in like manner only a quarter of an hour before.

Her father entered, and started back, almost upsetting some one behind him by his recoil, on seeing his daughter in her motionless attitude by the dead man.

“My God, Ellinor! what has brought you here?” he said, almost fiercely.

But she answered as one stupefied, “I don’t know.  Is he dead?”

“Hush, hush, child; it cannot be helped.”

She raised her eyes to the solemn, pitying, awe-stricken face behind her father’s—­the countenance of Dixon.

“Is he dead?” she asked of him.

The man stepped forwards, respectfully pushing his master on one side as he did so.  He bent down over the corpse, and looked, and listened and then reaching a candle off the table, he signed Mr. Wilkins to close the door.  And Mr. Wilkins obeyed, and looked with an intensity of eagerness almost amounting to faintness on the experiment, and yet he could not hope.  The flame was steady—­steady and pitilessly unstirred, even when it was adjusted close to mouth and nostril; the head was raised up by one of Dixon’s stalwart arms, while he held the candle in the other hand.  Ellinor fancied that there was some trembling on Dixon’s part, and grasped his wrist tightly in order to give it the requisite motionless firmness.

All in vain.  The head was placed again on the cushions, the servant rose and stood by his master, looked sadly on the dead man, whom, living, none of them had liked or cared for, and Ellinor sat on, quiet and tearless, as one in a trance.

“How was it, father?” at length she asked.

He would fain have had her ignorant of all, but so questioned by her lips, so adjured by her eyes in the very presence of death, he could not choose but speak the truth; he spoke it in convulsive gasps, each sentence an effort: 

“He taunted me—­he was insolent, beyond my patience—­I could not bear it.  I struck him—­I can’t tell how it was.  He must have hit his head in falling.  Oh, my God! one little hour a go I was innocent of this man’s blood!” He covered his face with his hands.

Ellinor took the candle again; kneeling behind Mr. Dunster’s head, she tried the futile experiment once more.

“Could not a doctor do some good?” she asked of Dixon, in a hopeless voice.