“You were a brave, unselfish girl to think so.”
“Ah, sir, we are not selfish when we love. I was very fond of him, poor fellow. I had begun with pitying him, and then he was a thoroughbred gentleman—he was vielle roche, monsieur, and I have always admired the noblesse. I am no Republican, moi. And he had such winning ways when he was sober—and he was not stupid as other men are when he was drunk—only more brilliant—la tête montée—hélas, comme il pétillait d’esprit—but it was his brain that he was burning—that was the fuel that made the light. But how is it you interest yourself in him, monsieur?” she asked, suddenly, fixing him with her sharp black eyes. “You say it is not about property. You must have a motive, all the same.”
“I have a motive, but my interest is not personal. I am acting for some one who now owns the Strangway estate, and who wishes to know what has become of the old family.”
“What can it matter to any one?” asked Madame Coralie, suspiciously. “They had lost all their money—of the land that had been theirs not an acre was left. What business is it of any one’s what became of them when they were driven from their birth-place. Oh, how my poor Frederick hated the race that had possessed itself of his estate! There was nothing too bad for them. When he was excited he would rave about them awfully—a beggarly lawyer, a black-hearted scoundrel, that is what he would call Lord—Lord Sherrington, when he had been drinking.”
Theodore’s brow grew thoughtful. How strange this seemed, almost like a confirmation of Juanita’s superstitious horror of the banished race. Perhaps it was not unnatural that an unlucky spendthrift—ruined, disgraced—should hate the favourite of fortune who had ousted him; but not with a hate capable of murder, murder in cold blood, the murder of a man who had never injured him even indirectly.
“Your husband has been dead some years, I conclude?” he said, presently.
“Three years and a half on the tenth of last month.”
“And you had a troublesome time with him, I fear?”
“Trouble seems a light word for what I went through. It was like living in hell—there is no other word—the hell which a madman can make of all around him. For a few weeks we went on quietly—he seemed contented, and I was very happy, thinking I had cured him. I watched him as a cat watches a mouse, for fear he should go wrong again. He never went out without me; and at home I did all that a woman can do to make much of the man she loves, studying him in everything, surrounding him with every little luxury I could afford, cooking dainty little meals for him, petting him as if he had been an idolized child. He seemed grateful, for the first few weeks, and almost happy. Then I saw he was beginning to mope a little. He got low-spirited, and would sit over the fire and brood—it was cutting March weather—and would moan over his blighted life, and his own folly. ‘If I had to begin over again,’ he would say, ‘ah, it would be different, Cora, it would be all different.’”
“He was not unkind to you?”