There was silence for several moments. The girl's fingers closed upon the packet. She turned round and faced them all. She faced them all, but she addressed more particularly Wrayson.
"You are wondering why I hesitate," she said slowly. "Augustus said destroy the packet, and I suppose I ought to do it."
"By God, you shan't!" Sydney Barnes broke in fiercely. "Morry didn't know that I should be here to look after things."
She waited until he had finished, but she seemed to take very little, if any, notice of his intervention.
"It isn't," she continued, "that I'm afraid to go back to the bar. I'll have to go to work some where, I suppose, but it isn't that. I want to know," she leaned a little forward,—"I want to know who it is that has robbed me of my husband. I don't care what he was to other people! He was very good to me, and I loved him. I should like to see the person who killed him hanged!"
Wrayson, for a moment, was discomposed.
"But that," he said, "has nothing to do with obeying your husband's directions about that packet."
She looked at him with tired eyes and changeless expression.
"Hasn't it?" she asked. "I am not so sure. You have explained about these letters. It is quite certain that my husband was killed by either the friends or the enemies of the woman who wrote these letters. I think that if I take this packet to the police it will help them to find the murderer!"
Her new attitude was a perplexing one. Wrayson glanced at the Baroness as though for counsel. She stepped forward and laid her hand upon the girl's shoulder.