The girl heard this long speech with an absent air, her tearful eyes fixed on vacancy, her restless hands clasped tightly, as if she would fain have restrained her grief by that muscular grip.
'I don't know whether it was wise or foolish,' she said, 'but I know we loved each other.'
'I loved him too, Justina,' said Maurice, using her Christian name involuntarily—she was not the kind of person to be called Miss Elgood—'as well as one man can love another. I take his death quietly enough, you see, but I would give ten years of my life to find his murderer.'
'I would give all my life,' said Justina, with a look that made him think she would verily have done it.
'You know nothing more than you told at the inquest this afternoon?—nothing that could throw any light upon his death?'
'Nothing. You ought to know much more about it than I.'
'How so?'
'You know all that went before that time—his circumstances—his associates. I have lain awake thinking of this thing from night till morning, until I believe that every idea that could be thought about it has come into my head. There must have been some motive for his murder.'
'The motive seems obvious enough,—highway robbery.'
'Yet his watch was found in the ditch.'