Ralph, who could only see his back, could not judge from his expression the effect that the papers had on him. He went off grumbling:
“It’s no use your hurrying, comrade, I shall catch you all right before the end of the business. Those papers were bequeathed to me; no one but me has any right to them.”
He accomplished the task with which he had been charged and brought back with him the station master’s wife and mother who insisted, as was the custom of the country, that they ought to keep watch over the dead. He found one of the workmen from down the line talking to Marescal and learned that two men had been seen hurrying through the wood and that one of them was limping.
“Was that all they found?” asked Ralph.
“Everything,” said Marescal. “They did find, on the track these two scoundrels took, a heel stuck between two roots which had gripped it, a heel torn off a shoe, but it was the heel of a woman’s shoe.”
“Then the workmen had nothing to report,” said Ralph in a tone of keen disappointment. [[42]]
“Nothing,” said Marescal a trifle glumly.
They raised the English girl from the floor and laid her on the seat. Ralph gazed at his beautiful and charming traveler for the last time, and murmured beneath his breath: “I shall avenge you, Miss Bakersfield. If I was unable to guard you and save you, I swear that your murderers shall be punished.”
He thought of the girl with the green eyes and swore again to take vengeance also on that mysterious creature.
“She was a beautiful creature,” he said. “Don’t you know her name?”