She found Mrs Smythe reclining on a cane lounge on the stoep, a book beside her, which she was not reading, and the morning paper open at the page with the gruesome headline lying in her lap. She looked round as Zoe Lawless mounted the steps, and seeing who it was, got up and went to meet her. "Oh! how good of you to come," she said. "I have been thinking of you... Zoe, isn't it awful? ... I can't believe it. I can scarcely realise it yet." Tears rose in her eyes, already spoiled with futile weeping for a man so little worthy of her grief. She dabbed at them ineffectually with a wet handkerchief, and added with unconscious absurdity: "Karl couldn't have done it... He wouldn't hurt a fly." Mrs Lawless put her hands upon her shoulders, and bending from her superior height, kissed the tremulous mouth. "Poor Kate!" she said, and led her gently back to her seat. "I feel," said Mrs Smythe plaintively, "as though he were dead already... as though he, and not the other man, had met with a violent end. Oh! surely he will be able to explain... They were two to one... What could they have wanted with him? And why were they armed? Men who are peaceable citizens don't carry firearms. Karl must have distrusted them to take a revolver with him... And yet, Colonel Grey--" She broke off suddenly, and added in a voice of puzzled questioning: "Zoe, you never liked Colonel Grey!" Mrs Lawless leant back in a chair, her chin tilted slightly upward, gazing into the remote blueness of the sky. The flicker of a smile shone in the dark eyes, but the gravity of her features remained otherwise unchanged. "That isn't quite a correct statement," she said. "As I told you before, it is Colonel Grey who doesn't like me." Mrs Smythe regarded her doubtfully. "I thought you were joking when you said that," she replied. "If you really believe it, I think you are mistaken. He has often spoken of you, and it seemed to me that he greatly admires you. It is a strange thing to say in face of what has happened, but I always felt he was a man to be trusted." "You can't be certain," replied Zoe, "that your first impression of him is wrong. Quarrels between men--even violent quarrels--don't necessarily make them rogues. I feel the same about him. I think he is an eminently trustworthy person." "But," objected Mrs Smythe, "there is this affair with Karl... Karl always disliked him--he was rude to him once in this house. He made me angry, I remember, poor fellow!" She sighed and again dabbed at her eyes with her ruined pocket-handkerchief. "We've been more like brother and sister than cousins," she explained apologetically. "He has confided his troubles to me since he was a boy, and now in this great trouble I can't even help."