She sighed.
“I am sorry,” she said. “Philip Maltabar is the one man I know who hated my brother. There has been a terrible and lifelong enmity between them. It has lasted since they were boys. I believe that it was to avoid him that my brother first went to South America. If there had been a Maltabar living anywhere around here I should have known where to go for vengeance.”
“Is it well to think of that, and so soon?” I asked, quietly. The girl’s aspect had changed. I looked away from her with a little shudder.
“What else is there for me to think of?” she demanded. “Supposing it were you, it would be different. You have other relatives. I have none. I am left alone in the world. My brother may have had his faults, but to me he was everything. Can you wonder that I hate the person who has deprived me of him?”
“You are not sure—it is not certain that there was not an accident—that he did not kill himself,” I suggested.
She dismissed the idea with scorn.
“Accident! What accident could there have been? It is not possible. As to taking his own life, it is ridiculous! Why should he? He was too fond of it. Other men might have done that, but Stephen—never! No. He was murdered in that little plantation. I know the exact spot. I have been there. There was a struggle, and some one, better prepared than he, killed him. Perhaps he was followed here from London. It may be so. And yet, what was he doing here at all? That visit to Naselton Hall was not without some special purpose. I am sure of it. It was in connection with that purpose that he met with his death. He must have come to see some one. I want to know who it was. That is what I am going to find out—whom he came to see. You can blame me if you like. It may be unchristian, and you are a parson’s daughter. I do not care. I am going to find out.”
I was silent. In a measure I was sorry for her, but down in my heart there lurked the seeds of a fear—nameless, but terribly potent—which put me out of all real sympathy with her. I began to wish that she would go away. I had answered her questions, and I had done all—more—than common courtesy demanded. Yet she sat there without any signs of moving.
“I suppose,” she said at last, finding that I kept silent, “that it would not be of any use waiting to see your father. He has not been here any longer than you have. He would not be any more likely to know anything of the man Maltabar?”