told you that, pray?”
Her manner had now changed from one of alarm to one of resentment, of mistrust. Her questions leaped from her as from a judge eager to condemn.
“Surely it was no secret that she had a sister,” he said. “The agent happened to mention it in speaking to me of the late tenant, as agents do.”
“Ah, no doubt,” she said half to herself. “You all are ready enough with explanations. Wise as serpents, if not harmless as doves.”
The last words were spoken with a break in her voice and a look that went to Harcourt’s heart. He understood that he was in the presence here of the strange, of a mind touched to wildness by a monstrous grief, and needing delicate handling.
“What I have told you is only the truth,” he said gently.
“Ah, no doubt,” she said again. “But did you know the history of the flat before you went into it?”
“Why, yes.”
“Yet you went. What, then, was your motive?”
“Ah, now, come,” said he. “I can see that you are on a wrong track, and I must try to set things right. Your sister has perhaps been badly treated by some one or more persons, and the notion has occurred to you that I may be one of them, or may have some knowledge even of one of them. But I have been in England only a month; I come from Wyoming, a place at the other end of creation. See if you can’t catch a hint of an accent in my speech. I never saw your sister alive; I am quite a stranger in London. It is not nice to be mistrusted.”
She thought this over gravely, then said with a moment’s openness of heart: “Forgive me, if I give you pain unjustly”; but at once again she changed, muttering stubbornly to herself with a certain vindictiveness: “If I mistrust you, it is not for nothing. I suppose you are all about equally pitiless and deadly. There she lies, low enough, dead, undone—so young—Gwen! was there no pity, no help, not even God to direct, not even God?”
Again she covered her face, and was shaken with grief, while Harcourt, yearning, but not daring to stir a step toward her, stood in pain; till presently she looked up at him sharply with all the former suspiciousness, saying with here a sob and there a sob: “But, after all, words are only words. You can all talk, I dare say; yet you have not been able to give me any valid explanation.”
“Of what?” he asked.
“Of your strange interest in this lady; of your presence here over her grave; of the fact that you chose to occupy the flat, knowing what you know of it. In my mind these are points against you.”
He could not help smiling. “Let me reason with you,” said he earnestly. “Remember that I am not the first person who has occupied the flat since the death of your sister. Did not a Miss L’Estrange have it before me? Well, my motive is precisely the same as hers—I wanted somewhere to live. You did not attribute to Miss L’Estrange any ulterior motive, I think? Then why attribute one to me?”
“I attribute nothing to any one,” she sighed. “I merely ask for an explanation which you seem unable to give.”
“Think, now! Have I not given it? I say that I wanted a flat and took this one. Don’t mistrust me for nothing!”
“Oh, I keep a perfectly open mind. Till things are proved to me, I mistrust no one. But you make your excuses with rather too much earnestness to be convincing; for you would not care what I thought, if you had no motive.”
“My motive is simply a desire to stand well with you,” said David. “You won’t punish me for that?”
Now for the first time she looked squarely at him, her eyes meditating gravely upon his face, as she said: “If you never knew my sister before, it was good of you to come to her grave. You do not look like one of the ruthless ones.”
“No, I hope not. Thank you for saying that,” said David, with his eyes on the ground. He was shy with women. Such a girl as this filled a shrine in his presence.
“And yet, who can ever tell?” she sighed, half to herself, with a weary drop of the hand. “The world seems so hopelessly given over to I don’t know what. One would say that men were compounded of fraud and ill-will, so that one does not know whom to trust, nor even if there is any one to be trusted. You go into the flat without any motive apparently that you can give. You would never have managed it, if I had had my way!”
“Is it against your will that the flat has been let?” asked David.
“That is not your business, you know!” she said, quickly resentful of probing questions.
“I only asked,” said he, “in order to tell you that if it was against your will, you have only to breathe a wish, and I shall find the means to leave it.”
“Well, surely that is kindly said,” she answered. “Forgive me, will you, if I seem unreasonable? Perhaps you do not know what grief is. I will tell you that it is against my will that the flat has been let. My mother’s doing; she insisted because she suspected that I had a tendency to—be drawn toward the spot; she feared that I might—go there; and so it was let. But it is useless, I suppose, for you to give it up. They would only let it to some one else. And whoever was in it, I should have the same suspicions—”
That word! “Suspicions of what?” asked David. “I am so much in the dark as to what you mean! If you would explain yourself, then I might be able to help you. Will you let me help you?”
“God knows what the truth is,” she said despondently, staring downward afresh, for, when David looked at her, her eyes fell. “They are all kind enough at first, no doubt, and their kindness ends here, where the grass grows, and the winds moan all night, Gwen. I do not know who or what you are, sir,” she added, with that puzzling sharpness, “or what your motive may be; but—what have you done with my sister’s papers?”
“Papers?” said David. “You surprise me. Are there any papers of your sister’s in the flat?”
She looked keenly at him, with eyelids lowered, seeking to read his mind as though it was an open book.
“Who knows?” said she.
He recalled his harmless conversational dodge with Dibbin. He could have smiled at the thought; but he only answered: “Surely all her papers have been removed?”
“Who knows?” she said again, eying him keenly.
“Certainly, I have seen no papers!” he exclaimed.
“Well, you seem honest.”
“I hope so.”
“If you did happen to find any papers in the flat, they would not be your property, would they?”
“Of course not!”
“What would you do with them?”
“I should give them to you.”
“God grant that you are honest!” she sighed. “But how would you find me?”
“If you give me your name and address—”
“My name is Violet Mordaunt,” she said rapidly, as if venturing against some feeling of rashness. “My home is at Rigsworth in Warwickshire, near Kenilworth; but I am for the present in London, at—”
Before she could mention her London address they were both aware that a third person was with them. The light carpet of snow would not have deadened the newcomer’s approach to David’s ears, were it not that he was so absorbed in the words, the looks, the merest gestures of his companion. David heard the girl say; “Oh, Mr. Van Hupfeldt!” and a man walked past him to the grave with lifted hat. The man and Violet Mordaunt shook hands. It was now getting dark; but David could still see that the newcomer was an uncommonly handsome person, turned out with faultless elegance from his glossy beaver to the tip of his verni boots; of dark, sallow skin; and a black mustache as daintily curled as those mustaches which one sees