Still, the suspicions thus newly aroused, and pointing in another quarter, are confined to those acquainted with the character of the new man suspected. Nor are they many. Beyond the obscure corner of Rugg's Ferry there are few who have ever heard of, still fewer ever seen him. Outside the pale of "society," with most part of his life passed abroad, he is a stranger, not only to the gentry of the neighbourhood, but most of the common people as well. Jack Wingate chanced to have heard of him by reason of his proximity to Rugg's Ferry, and his own necessity for oft going there. But possibly as much on the account of the intimate relations existing between the owner of Glyngog House and Coracle Dick.
Others less interested know little of either individual, and when it is told that a Mr. Lewin Murdock has succeeded to the estates of Llangorren--at the same time it becoming known that he is the cousin of her whom death has deprived of them--to the general public the succession seems natural enough; since it has been long understood that the lady had no nearer relative.
Therefore, only the few intimately familiar with the facts relating to the reversion of the property held fast to the suspicion thus excited. But as no word came out, either at the inquest or elsewhere, and nothing has since arisen to justify it, they also begin to share the universal belief, that for the death of Gwendoline Wynn nobody is to blame.
Even George Shenstone, sorely grieving, accepts it thus. Of unsuspicious nature, incapable of believing in a crime so terrible, a deed so dark, as that would infer, he cannot suppose that the gentleman, now his nearest neighbour--for the lands of Llangorren adjoin those of his father--has come into possession of them by such foul means as murder.
His father may think differently, he knowing more of Lewin Murdock. Not much of his late life, but his earlier, with its surroundings and antecedents. Still Sir George is silent, whatever his thoughts. It is not a subject to be lightly spoken of, or rashly commented upon.
There is one who, more than any other, reflects upon the sad fate of her whom he had so fondly loved, and differing from the rest as to how she came to her death; this one is Captain Ryecroft. He, too, might have yielded to the popular impression of its having been accidental, but for certain circumstances that have come to his knowledge, and which he has yet kept to himself. He has not forgotten what was, at an early period, communicated to him by the waterman Wingate, about the odd-looking old house up the glen; nor yet the uneasy manner of Gwendoline Wynn, when once, in conversation with her, he referred to the place and its occupier. This, with Jack's original story, and other details added, besides incidents that have since transpired, are recalled to him vividly on hearing that the owner of Glyngog has also become owner of Llangorren.