“And yet he seems to have accepted a casual invitation, and came down here within a day or two of his arrival in England,” I remarked.
“I cannot understand it!” she exclaimed, passionately. “Stephen and I have not met for many years—he has been living in South America, and I have been in Paris—but he wrote to me constantly, and in every letter he repeated how eagerly he was looking forward to seeing me again. I cannot think that he would have come down here just as an ordinary visit of civility before coming to me, or sending for me to come to him. There must be something behind it—something of which I do not know.”
“You know, of course, that Naselton Hall is shut up and that the Naseltons have gone to Italy?” I asked her.
“They told me so at the police station,” she answered. “I have sent Lady Naselton a telegram. It is a long time since I saw Stephen, and one does not tell everything in letters. He may have formed great friendships of which I have never heard.”
“Or great enmities,” I suggested, softly.
“Or enmities,” she repeated, thoughtfully. “Yes; he may have made enemies. That is possible. He was passionate, and he was wilful. He was the sort of a man who made enemies.”
She was quite calm now, and I had a good look at her. She was certainly plain. Her face was sharp and thin, and her eyes were a dull, dark color. She was undersized and ungraceful, in addition to which she was dressed much too richly for traveling, and in questionable taste. So far as I could recollect there was not the slightest resemblance between her and the dead man.
She surprised me in the middle of my scrutiny, but she did not seem to notice it. She had evidently been thinking something out.
“You have not lived here very long, Miss Ffolliot?” she asked, “have you?”
I shook my head.