“The explanation of what, if one may inquire?”
“Of your precious colonel,” said mademoiselle. “That is gold, Monsieur L'Abbé. I have seen similar dirt in a museum in Paris.” She took up one of the pebbles. “Scrape it with your knife,” she said, handing it to him.
The abbé obeyed her, and volunteered on his own account to bite it. He handed it back to her with the marks of his teeth on it, and one side of it scraped clean showing pure gold. Then he walked pensively to the window, where he stood with his back turned to her in deep thought for some minutes. At length he turned on his heel and looked at her.
“It began,” he said, holding up one finger and shaking it slowly from side to side, which seemed to indicate that his hearer must be silent for a while, “long ago. I see it now.”
“Part of it,” corrected mademoiselle, inexorably.
“He must have discovered it two years ago when he first surveyed this country for the proposed railway. I see now why that man from St. Florent shot Pietro Andrei on the high-road. Pietro Andrei was in the way, and a little subtle revival of a forgotten vendetta secured his removal. I see now whence came the anonymous letter intended to frighten Mattei Perucca away from here. It frightened him into the next world.”
“And I see now,” interrupted the refractory listener, “why Denise received an offer for the estate before she had become possessed of it, and an offer of marriage before we had been here a month. But he tripped and fell then,” she concluded grimly.
“And all for money,” said the abbé, contemptuously.
“Wait,” said mademoiselle—“wait till you have yourself been tempted. So many fall. It must be greater than we think, that temptation. You and I perhaps have never had it.”
“No,” replied the abbé, simply. “There has never been more than a sou in my poor-box at the church. I see now,” continued Susini, “who has been stirring up this old strife between the Peruccas and the Vasselots—offering, as he was, to buy from one and the other alternately. This dirt, mademoiselle, must lie on both estates.”