Read "The Dumpling" by Coulson Kernahan online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
The inquest over -- for two mortal days I was kept hanging about Southend, to the mortuary of which the bodies had been taken -- I returned to town, eager to see Kate, and to compel from her dear lips a second sweet admission that I was not without a place in her heart. Something there was in the look of the house -- the drawn blinds of the reception rooms, the fact that, except for the hall and the basement, the place was in darkness -- which turned me cold and sick with apprehension and with a sense of coming evil.
"Good evening, Metcalfe," I said, when the door was opened by that worthy. "Are the ladies in? -- Miss Carleton, or Miss Kate?"