"No wonder she was drowsy! No wonder she was absent-minded!" cried Ernest, almost in tears.
Augusta said, with dreadful solemnity: "No wonder that for the last month her breakfast trays have come away almost untouched!"
"I saw her failing day by day!" wailed Meg.
Nicholas cast a grim look at those about him. "This has probably shortened her life by years."
"It has killed her!" said Ernest, distractedly.
"He's little better than a murderer!" said Augusta.
He could look them in the eyes now. They knew the worst. He was a monster, and a murderer. Let them take him out and hang him to the nearest tree! He was almost calm.
Their tempers were surging this way and that like waves driven by variable winds. They were all talking at once, blaming him, blaming each other, desperately near to blaming old Adeline! And the voice of Uncle Nicholas, like the voice of the seventh wave, was the most resonant, the most terrible. It was the voice of the wronged eldest son.
Presently the voice of Piers, full of malicious laughter, disentangled itself from the others. He was saying: "The whole thing is a tremendous joke on the family. We thought Finch was queer. A weakling. But, don't you see, he's the strongest, the sanest, of the lot? He's been pulling the wool over everybody's eyes for years. Poor, harmless, hobbledehoy Finch! Well-meaning, but so simple! I tell you, he's as cool and calculating as they make them! He's had this under his hat ever since he came back from New York!"
"Rot!" said Renny.
"You'd stand up for him, Renny! Why, he's fooled you all along! Didn't he trick you into thinking he went in to Leighs' to study, when he was up to his eyes in play-acting? Didn't he trick you nicely over the orchestra? He was supposed to be studying then, and he was playing the piano in cheap restaurants, and coming home drunk in the morning! And now he's tricked you out of Gran's money!" The laughter had died out of his voice—it was savage.
