"Yes?" he answered, tentatively.
"Perhaps you can tell me who these are?" She dipped into a trunk and handed Paul the photograph of the three young girls.
At a glance he saw the subject. "My sight is not very good, I will take it to the light," he said, moving to the window, holding back the blind, and examining the portrait with his back to her.
Heavens! For a moment, as he saw the lovely face of the seated girl, he felt as if some one had given him a blow. There was only one Joan Thorne! To mistake that face was impossible.
Regaining his composure with a stern effort of will--for he must not "give his friend away," especially now that he was one of the helpless dead--he turned to Vera.
"I don't understand! Who are these persons?" he asked, as if mystified.
"That is what I want to find out!" she cried, passionately. "Mr. Naz--I know, I feel, my dearest Victor was murdered! He never took that morphia himself! It was given him--and--by a woman! I should know her again--I should, I am sure I should! It was she I saw coming away from the house that night. I said nothing about it at the inquest, for fear of dishonouring my dearest; it was she the servant next door heard talking to him, and saw coming out of the house--the landlady has just been in to tell me about it! The girl will swear to it--when we get her--she was so frightened about it she has run away! Mr. Naz, you were his friend, surely, surely you will not rest till his murderess is found and punished? I demand it of you!"
Her great sapphire eyes gleamed--she was impressive in her intensity. Paul's fair hair seemed to bristle on his head. Victor had always fascinated--influenced him--his mantle seemed to have fallen on his beloved's shoulders.
"I don't understand," he stammered, taking refuge, for safety, in apparent bewilderment; although even as she had clamoured her new evidence with seeming incoherence, he saw all the damning circumstances in their most fatal light: Joan Thorne's portrait, Victor's curious suggestions about the Thorne family being in his power; Miss Thorne's secret expeditions with her maid Julie, his betrothed, whose acquaintance, although it had led to his really caring for her, had been made by him at Victor's suggestions; the admission of Victor's that he was married; then this new and startling evidence--and Miss Thorne's ghastly, horror-stricken face when he, only half believing she was the woman liée with the dead man, only half-suspecting that she might have been instrumental in his destruction, boldly taxed her with it at the Duke of Arran's ball, when alone with her for a few moments in the conservatory.
"You don't understand?" She spoke bitterly. "You are no friend of his, then! You would leave him--in his tomb--killed, murdered--his murderess at large!"