“Not such a very strong interest,” he answered. “I am here merely to fill an idle hour, and because I happen to be occupying the flat in which your sister died. There is that link between her and me; she has moved in the same little home, looked from the same windows, slept in the same room, as I, poor girl.”
She suddenly looked up from the ground, saying: “May I ask how long you have been there?”
“This is only the second day,” he answered with a reassuring smile.
“Your interest in her has been sudden.”
“But her crayon portrait is there over my dining-room mantelpiece, and it is an interesting one. The moment I saw you I understood that you are her sister.”
“You must have known that she had a sister.”
“Why, yes, I knew.”
“Who told you that, pray?”
Her manner had now changed from one of alarm to one of resentment, of mistrust. Her questions leaped from her as from a judge eager to condemn.
“Surely it was no secret that she had a sister,” he said. “The agent happened to mention it in speaking to me of the late tenant, as agents do.”