"I think of it all—often," she answered in a hushed voice, "and every time I seem to see things differently. My poor mother!"
"You never knew her?" he asked.
"No, I was too young—scarcely more than a year old. Yet her loss seems to have overshadowed my whole life."
"Was she like you?"
"Yes, I believe so. She was dark—not so dark as I am—but she was stately and beautiful. So she has always been described to me, and so I always seem to see her."
Stafford turned and looked about him.
"It must be almost as it was then," he said wonderingly, pointing to the rusty truckle-bed in the corner. "And there is the broken over-turned chair! It might have been yesterday."
She nodded.
"So my guardian found it," she said. "It had been my father's bungalow and he never allowed it to be touched. When I came of age I gave it to him. It seemed to belong to him, somehow. They say that it nearly broke his heart when he found that he had come too late to save my father. My father was his dearest, almost his only friend."
"Were they killed at once?" Stafford asked with hesitating curiosity. "I have never known the rights of the case. It has always been a painful subject for me—with you I don't mind."