"Perhaps. That depends. I might, if it sounded likely."
"Listen, then. I don't come here to do you any harm. My visits won't hurt you. Only--only--this is a dangerous house in more ways than one. It is a very old one--strange things happen sometimes in it. How," she said, and now her voice which had been sunk to a whisper became even lower, "how would you like to die in it?"
Perhaps the slow mysterious tones of that voice--the something weird and wizard in the elf-like appearance of this dusky girl who was, in truth, beautiful with that beauty often found in the half-caste Indian--was what caused Julian to feel a sort of creepiness to come over him in spite of the warm, bath-like temperature of the night.
"Neither in this house nor elsewhere, just at present," he remarked, steadying his nerves. "But," he continued, "I don't suppose there is much likelihood of that. Who is going to cause me to die?"
For answer the girl cast those marvellous orbs of hers all around the room, taking, meanwhile, as she did so, the mosquito curtains in her hands and shaking them with a swish away from the floor on which they drooped in festoons; she looking also behind the bedposts and in other places.
"No one--to-night," she said, "but--but--if I may not come here again, if you will not let me, then do this always. And--perhaps--some night you will know."
After which she moved off towards the window, her lithe, graceful figure seeming to glide without the assistance of any movement from her feet towards the open space; and made as though she meant to retire. Yet, as she stood within the framework of that window, she turned and looked back at him, her finger slightly raised as though impressing silence.
Then she stepped outside on to the boards of the veranda and peered over the front of it down towards the garden from which, now, there rose the countless perfumes exhaled by the Caribbean wealth of flowers. Also, she crept along to either side of the window, glancing to right and left of her until, at that moment, borne on the soft night breeze, there came from the front of the house, a harsh, strident, and contemptuous laugh--the laugh of Sebastian Ritherdon. When, seemingly reassured by this, she returned again towards the open window and said:
"You go to-morrow to the Cockscomb mountains shooting. Yet, when there, be careful. Danger is there, too. This land is full of snakes, the coral snake--which kills instantly, even like the fer de lance of the islands, the rattlesnake, the tamagusa, or, as you English say, the 'tommy-goff.' One killed him--her husband," and she pointed down to where Madame Carmaux might be supposed to be sitting at this moment, while as she did so he saw in her eyes a look so startling--since they blazed with fire--that he stared amazed. Was she, this half-savage girl, gloating over the horrid death of a man which must have taken place ere she was born? Or--or--what?
"In all the land," she went on, "there are snakes. Those I tell you of--and--others. You understand? And others."