Cyril pulled himself together. It was absurd, he reasoned, to allow himself to be impressed by her strange personality.
"A likely story!" he exclaimed; and the very fact that he was more than half-inclined to believe her, made him speak more roughly than he would otherwise have done.
"Think what you like," she cried, shrugging her shoulders contemptuously. "Have me arrested—have me hung—what do I care? Death has no terrors for me."
"So you confess that it was you who murdered his Lordship? Ah, I suspected it! Your sanctimonious airs didn't deceive me," exclaimed Cyril triumphantly.
"No, I did not murder him," she replied calmly, almost indifferently.
"I think you will have some difficulty convincing the police of that. You have no alibi to prove that you were not in these rooms at the time of the murder, and now when I tell them that I found you trying to steal——"
"I am no thief," she interrupted him with blazing eyes. "I tell you, I came here to get what is mine by right."
"Do you really expect me to believe that? Even if what you say were true, you would not have had to sneak in here in the middle of the night. You know very well that I should have made no objections to your claiming your own."
"So you say. But if I had gone to you and told you that a great lord had robbed me, a poor woman, of something which is dearer to me than life itself, would you have believed me? If I had said to you, 'I must look through his Lordship's papers; I must be free to search everywhere,' would you have given me permission to do so? No, never. You think I fear you? That it was because I was ashamed of my errand that I came here at this hour? Bah! All I feared was that I should be prevented from discovering the truth. The truth?" Valdriguez's voice suddenly dropped and she seemed to forget Cyril's presence. "It is here, somewhere." She continued speaking as if to herself and her wild eyes swept feverishly around the room. "He told me it was here—and yet how can I be sure of it? He may have lied to me about this as he did about everything else. How can I tell? Oh, this uncertainty is torture! I cannot bear it any longer, oh, my God!" she cried, clasping her hands and lifting her streaming eyes to heaven, "Thou knowest that I have striven all my life to do Thy will; I have borne the cross that Thou sawest fit to lay upon me without a murmur, nor have I once begged for mercy at Thy hands; but now, now, oh, my Father, I beseech thee, give me to know the truth before I die——"
Cyril watched the woman narrowly. He felt that he must try and maintain a judicial attitude toward her and not allow himself to be led astray by his sympathies which, as he knew to his cost, were only too easily aroused. After all, he reasoned, was it not more than likely that she was delivering this melodramatic tirade for his benefit? On the other hand, it was against his principles as well as against his inclinations to deal harshly with a woman.