"Well, I hope you were satisfied with what you saw?" I said carelessly.
She snapped her fingers quickly, and laughed. "Bah! you think you will put me off; you think I don't understand," she said. "I tell you I saw you come to that door and look out; I saw you in the starlight. And then I saw her come; heard the shriek; saw you catch her in your arms. After that, the fastening of the door by the doctor, while you held the lamp. And yet this morning"—her voice changed to a tone of bitter irony—"this morning, if you please, no one knows anything about it, and everyone has slept well. Bah!"
She snapped her fingers again, and it seemed almost as if she waited to know what I should say. But I realised that this woman was an intimate of the doctor; and it was my business, then, to fear everyone in that house, save Debora. So I went on smoking, and, still without turning my head, talked to the woman I saw in the mirror.
"Have you anything else to say?" I asked calmly.
"Oh! a great deal," she flashed back at me, forgetting the cautious voice in which she had spoken. "I want, first of all, to know who you are, and how you come to be in this house so mysteriously and so suddenly; for who saw you arrive? That I shall discover some day for myself. I discover everything in time. And I want to tell you something."
She moved a step nearer to my chair, and now I turned my head and looked into her eyes.
"He did not succeed last night; but perhaps the next time he will not fail. So surely as I stand here, so surely do I know that he will kill her." She nodded her head with incredible swiftness two or three times, and drew back from me, with her lips tightly pursed.
I lost control of myself in the sudden shock of her words; I sprang to my feet. "What do you mean?" I asked in horror. "What do you know?"
"Only what I have said," she mocked at me, as she made for the door. "I would advise you, Mr. Mysterious, to look well after this girl you love—this frail thing of prettiness. For the doctor will surely kill her!" Then she was gone, and I was left staring helplessly at the closed door.
So much had that thought been in my own mind that her words seemed but an echo. I thought I saw that this man, Bardolph Just, cheated of his purpose in securing the girl, had made up his mind to get rid of her—out of some insane jealousy that prompted him not to allow her to go to the arms of another man. Yet, when I came to think over the problem, it occurred to me that if, as he had faintly suggested, he wanted control of her fortune, this would be but the act of a madman. The only possibility was that the fortune might in some way be secured by him without her.