Her touch upset the body and it rolled on the
floor. The woman was dead. With a shriek Susan recoiled and
fell on her knees. Her cry speedily brought the other
servants.
"Look!" cried Susan pointing, "she is dead--murdered!"
Geraldine and Mrs. Pill shrieked with horror. Thomas
preserved his stolid look of composure.
CHAPTER III
A MYSTERIOUS DEATH
To be the husband of a celebrated woman is not an unmixed
blessing. Mr. Peter Octagon found it to be so, when he
married Mrs. Saxon, the widow of an eminent Q.C. She was a
fine Junoesque tragic woman, who modelled herself on the
portraits of the late Mrs. Siddons. Peter, on the contrary,
was a small, meek, light-haired, short-sighted man, who had
never done anything in his unromantic life, save accumulate a
fortune as a law-stationer. For many years he lived in single
blessedness, but when he retired with an assured income of
three thousand a year, he thought he would marry. He had no
relatives, having been brought up in a Foundling Hospital, and
consequently, found life rather lonely in his fine Kensington
house. He really did not care about living in such a mansion,
and had purchased the property as a speculation, intending to
sell it at a profit. But having fallen in with Mrs. Saxon,
then a hard-up widow, she not only induced him to marry her,
but, when married, she insisted that the house should be
retained, so that she could dispense hospitality to a literary
circle.
Pages:
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44