"Oh, yes, poor dear, he did! He was quite nice when he said we could marry and he would allow us money. You saw him?"
"I did. He came to the hospital. Didn't he tell you when he returned, Sylvia?"
"I never saw him," she wept. "He never came upstairs, but went out, and I went to bed. He left the door leading to the stairs open, too, on that night, a thing he never did before. And then the key of the shop. Bart used to hang it on a nail in the cellar and father would put it into his pocket after supper. Deborah couldn't find it in his clothes, and when she went afterwards to the cellar it was on the nail. On that night, Paul, father did everything different to what he usually did."
"He seems to have had some mental trouble," said Paul, gently, "and I believe it was connected with that brooch. When he spoke to me at the hospital he said he would let you marry me, and would allow us an income, if I gave him the serpent brooch to take to America."
"But why did he want the brooch?" asked Sylvia, puzzled.
"Ah!" said Beecot, with great significance, "if we could find out his reason we would learn who killed him and why he was killed."
Sylvia wept afresh on this reference to the tragedy which was yet fresh in her memory: but as weeping would not bring back the dead, and Paul was much distressed at the sight of her tears, she dried her eyes for the hundredth time within the last few days and sat again on the sofa by her lover. There they built castles in the air.
"I tell you what, Sylvia," said Paul, reflectively; "after this will business is settled and a few weeks have elapsed, we can marry."
"Oh, Paul, not for a year! Think of poor father's memory."