"Oh, poor fellow. I have lost my only friend, and now, indeed, I am the most wretched girl in all the world."
Flinging her clasped arms on the table, she hid her face in them, and sobbed as though her heart would break. Curtis placed a hand on her shoulder, and strove to calm her with such commonplace phrases as his dazed brain could dictate, but she wept bitterly, just as a child might weep if disappointed about the non-fulfillment of some object on which its heart was set.
"It sounds horrid—I know—" she murmured brokenly, "that I should—seem to be thinking—only of myself. But—Monsieur de Courtois—was the one man—who could save me. Now—I don't know—what will become of me. How cruel is fate! If only—we could have been married yesterday—perhaps this dreadful thing would not have happened."
Curtis, who had never been so mystified in his life, followed up those last disjointed words as a man lost in a forest might cling to a path in the certainty that it would lead somewhere. He rejected all else, since the wild vagaries of events during the past few minutes were beyond his comprehension. He waited, therefore, until the vehemence of her grief had somewhat subsided, and then, with another friendly pressure on her shoulder, he spoke with as much firmness as he thought the situation demanded.
"Now, Miss Grandison, you must endeavor to regain self-control," he said. "Monsieur de Courtois has been killed, and your—your friendship for him—no less than the interests of justice—demand that those responsible for his death should be discovered and punished."
At that, she raised her head, and lifted her swimming eyes to his, and Curtis saw that they were blue, not violet, and that their hue changed as the light irradiated their profound depths.
"He met with no accident, then, but was murdered?" she cried.
"Yes."
"And for my sake?"
"I gather from what you have said that that is possible."