"I am sure I should," Ronald said, quietly; "I think I could make her happy, but I fear I shall never have a chance. She has told you what I said last night. I have been awake all the night thinking it over, and I am sure I have decided rightly. My disgrace is hard enough to bear alone; I will never share it with her."
"I think you are right, Mervyn--at least for the present. If, say in five years hence, you are both of the same mind towards each other, as I do not doubt you will be," he added, in reply to the look of perfect confidence that passed between his daughter and Ronald, "we will talk the matter over again. Five years is a long time, and old stories fade out of people's remembrance. In five years, then, one may discuss it again; but I don't mean Mary to wait five years if I can help it, and she has no inclination to wait five years either, have you, child?" Mary shook her head. "So I will tell you what we have resolved upon, for we have made up our minds about it. In the first place somebody murdered this cousin of yours; that's quite clear, isn't it?"
"That is quite clear," Ronald replied. "It is absolutely certain that it was not a suicide."
"In the next place, from what she says, it is quite clear also that this was not done by an ordinary burglar. The circumstances of her death, and the discovery that her watch and jewels were hastily thrust into the ground and left there to spoil, pretty well shows that."
"I think so," Ronald said. "I am convinced that whoever did it, the murder was a deliberate one, and not the work of thieves."
"Then it is evident that it was the work of some one in the neighbourhood, of some one who either had a personal hatred of your cousin, or who wished to injure you."
"To injure me," Ronald repeated in surprise. "I never thought of it in that way. Why to injure me?"
"I say to injure you, because it seems to me that there was a deliberate attempt to fix the guilt upon you. Some one must have put your glove where it was found, for it appears, from what you told Mary, that you certainly could not have dropped it there."
"It might seem so," Ronald said, thoughtfully, "and yet I cannot believe it; in fact, I had, so far as I know, no quarrel with any one in the neighbourhood. I had been away on service for years, and so had nothing to do with the working of the estate, indeed I never had an angry word with any man upon it."