“Oh, Joel dear, you poor extraordinary child. I would have killed him for you.”
“Perhaps, but you weren’t around in those days; and besides, it was the feeling of defending my own name that made me do it. I wouldn’t have brooked a man’s defending me.”
“Now that I’ve got to do something about your uncle, what would an extra murder more or less have mattered?”
“Julian,” she said quickly, “you can’t stop my uncle if he is bound and determined, even by killing him. He would have a way of getting around his own murder, if it took his ghost to do it.”
“I won’t try murder, sweetheart. But I am going to have a talk with him—tonight.”
Julian stood up and bent over to kiss her.
“I’ll be back soon, I promise. Don’t you move.”
“Julian, please stay. I don’t want to be left alone in this awful house.”
But the door had closed behind him.