Luckily nobody
was about at that time of day--every one out of doors or in the Casino,
so there was no scene. Hannaford was lying as if asleep in bed, but
stone cold; and the doctor they sent for said he must have been dead for
hours. In his hand was a volume of Omar Khayyam, with a faded white rose
for a book marker. There was a bottle half full of veronal tabloids on
the table by the bedside; and he was known to be in the habit of taking
veronal, as he was a bad sleeper. One hopes it was simply--an overdose,
taken accidentally."
"Why should any one suspect the contrary?" Winter asked, his kind voice
sharpened by distress.
Dick was silent, looking at Rose.
"Come and sit by me, dear," she said, holding out her hand to her
husband. He came, sinking down on the sofa with a sense of relief, for
he had been conscious of a weakness in the knees, as if on entering the
room he had stumbled blindly against a bar of iron.
"Dick and I had just got to that part, when you opened the door," Rose
went on. "We are afraid--you said yourself that Captain Hannaford was
changed, the last time he came here."
"Only three days ago," George mused aloud. "He didn't look well. But he
said he was all right."
"He would! You know how he hated to talk of himself or anything he felt,
poor fellow. But I thought even then--I guessed----"
"What?"
"That it was a blow to him, hearing of Mary Grant's engagement." As she
said this, Rose carefully did not look at her cousin.
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