Justina was leaning before an old easy chair, her face buried in the faded chintz cushion, sobbing vehemently—curiously changed from the silent, impassible being Maurice had taken leave of ten minutes earlier. The sight of her sorrow touched him. Whatever it meant, this was real grief at any rate.

'Forgive me for this intrusion, Miss Elgood,' he said, gently, remaining near the door lest he should startle her by his abrupt approach. 'I am very anxious to talk to you alone, and ventured to return.'

She started up, hastily wiping away her tears.

'I am sorry to see you in such deep grief,' he said. 'You must have a tender heart to feel my poor friend's sad fate so acutely.'

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The pallid face crimsoned, as if this had been a reproof.

'I have no right to be so sorry, I dare say,' faltered Justina, 'but he was very kind to me—kinder than any one ever was before,—and it is hard that he should be taken away so cruelly, just when life seemed to be all new and different because of his goodness.'

'Poor child. You must have a grateful nature.'

'I am grateful to him.'

'I can understand that just at first you may feel his death as if it were a personal loss, but that cannot last long. You had known him so short a time. Granted that he admired you, and paid you pretty compliments and attentions which may be new to one so young. If he had lived to bid you good-bye to-morrow, and pass on his way, you would hardly have remembered him a week.'

'I should have remembered him all my life,' said Justina, firmly.

'He had made a deep impression upon your mind or your fancy, then, in those two days.'

'He loved me,' the girl answered, with a little203 burst of passion, 'and I gave him back love for love with all my heart, with all my strength, as they tell us we ought to love God. Why do you come here to torment me about him? You cannot bring him back to life. God will not. I would spend all my life upon my knees if he could be raised up again, like Lazarus! I meant never to have spoken of this. I have kept it even from my father. He told me that he loved me, and that I was to be his wife, and that all our lives to come were to be spent together. Think what it is to have been so happy and to have lost all.'

'Poor child,' repeated Clissold, laying his hand gently, as priest or father might have laid it, on the soft brown hair, thrust back in a tangled mass from the hot brow. 'Poor children, children both. It would have been a foolish marriage at best, my dear girl, if he had lived, and kept in the same mind. Unequal marriages bring remorse and misery for the most part. James Penwyn was not a hard-working wayfarer like me, who may choose my wife at any turn on the world's high road. He was the owner of a good old estate, and the happiness of his future204 depended on his making a suitable marriage. His wife must have been somebody before she was his wife. She must have had her own race to refer to, something to boast of on her own side, so that when their children grew up they should be able to give a satisfactory account of their maternal uncles and aunts. I dare, say you think me worldly-minded, poor child; but I am only worldly-wise. If it were a question of personal merit you might have made the best of wives.'

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 a205 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.'

'His murderer may naturally have feared to take anything likely to lead to detection. His money was taken.'

'Yes. It may have been for that. Yet it seems strange that he should have been chosen out of so many—that he should have been the206 only victim—murdered for the sake of a few pounds.'

'Unhappily, sordid as the motive is, that is a common kind of murder,' replied Maurice.

'But might not some one have a stronger motive than that?'

'I can imagine none. James never in his life made an enemy.'

'Are you quite sure of that?'

'As sure as I can be of anything about a young man whom I knew as well as if he had been my brother,' replied Maurice, wondering at the girl's calm clear tone. At this moment she seemed older than her years—his equal, or more than his equal in shrewdness and judgment.

'Is there any one who would be a gainer by his death?' she asked.

'Naturally. The next heir to the Penwyn estate is a very considerable gainer. For him James Penwyn's death means the difference between a hard-working life like mine and a splendid future.'

'Could he have anything to do with the crime?'

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'He! Churchill Penwyn? Well, no; it would be about as hard to suspect him as it was to suspect me. Churchill Penwyn is a gentleman, and, I conclude, a man of honour. His conduct towards me to-day showed him a man of kind feeling.'

'No. I suppose gentlemen do not commit such crimes,' mused Justina. 'And we shall never know who killed him. That seems hardest of all. That bright young life taken, and the wretch who took it left to go free.'

Tears filled her eyes as she turned away from Clissold, ashamed of her grief; tears which should have been shed in secret, but which she could not keep back when she thought of her young lover's doom.

Clissold tried to soothe her, assured her of his friendship—his help should she ever need it.

'I shall always be interested in you,' he said. 'I shall think of you as my poor lad's first and last love. He had had his foolish, boyish flirtations before; but I have reason to know that he never asked any other woman to be his wife; and he was208 too staunch and true to make such an offer unless he meant it.'

Justina gave him a grateful look. It was the first time he had seen her face light up with anything like pleasure that day.

'You do believe that he loved me, then?' she exclaimed, eagerly. 'It was not all my own foolish dream. He was not'—the next words came slowly, as if it hurt her to speak them—'amusing himself at my expense.'

'I have no doubt of his truth. I never knew him tell a lie. I do not say that his fancy would have lasted—it may have been too ardent, too sudden, to stand wear and tear. But be assured for the moment he was true—would have wrecked his life, perhaps, to keep true to the love of a day.'

This time the girl looked at him angrily.

'Why do you tell me he must have changed if God had spared him?' she added. 'Why do you find it so hard to imagine t............