For a few moments we sat, silently thinking over the story we had heard.
I broke the silence finally by saying, “It’s too circumstantial not to be true.”
“Yes,” Lora agreed, “it’s true, right enough, but I can’t quite understand.”
“Nothing hard to understand,” I argued. “Alma has a more uncontrollable temper than I had any idea of. This doesn’t make me think she went so far as to kill her uncle in one of her angry fits but I will say that the matter must be looked into.”
“Kee will look into it,” Lora said, with one of her gentle smiles.
Kee’s wife was a good sort, and she always tried to make things easy and pleasant for me. I knew, though, that she was thinking over this thing, and I dreaded to learn whither her thoughts led her.
For I distinctly remembered Mrs. Dallas saying that Sampson Tracy had wanted to tell her something about Alma, something unpleasant, she had implied. What could it have been but this, that the girl had, at times, an ungovernable temper?
For I was determined I would not believe that the trouble lay deeper than that. That the sweet girl I adored had a flaw in her brain or a physical disorder that meant impaired intellect in any way!
We ignored the subject by common consent, Lora, no doubt feeling that since it must be discussed with Kee, there was small use mulling it over beforehand.
And then, Kee returned.