“He was to have joined me in Paris on Saturday,” she continued after a minute or two. “He did not come and he sent a message. When Monday morning came and there was no letter from him, I felt sure that something had happened. I bought the English papers, and by chance I read about the murder. It seemed absurd to connect it with Stephen, especially as he told me he was going to be in London, but the description was so like him that I could not rest. I telegraphed to his bankers, and they replied that he had gone down into the country, but had left no address. So I crossed at once, and when I found that he had not been heard of at his club in London or anywhere else for more than ten days, I came down here. I went straight to the police station, and--and----” She burst into tears again. I came over to her side and tried my best to be sympathetic. I am afraid that it was not a very successful attempt, for my thoughts were wholly engrossed in another direction. However, I murmured a few platitudes, and presently she became more coherent. She even accepted some tea, and bathed her face with some eau de Cologne, which I fetched from my room. “Have you any idea,” I asked her presently, “why your brother came to this part of the country at all. He was staying at Lady Naselton’s, was he not? Was she an old friend?” She shook her head. “I never heard him speak of her in my life. He wrote me of a young Mr. Naselton who had visited him in Rio, but even in his last letter from Southampton he did not say a word about visiting them. He would have come straight to me, he said, but for a little urgent business in London.” “And yet he seems to have accepted a casual invitation, and came down here within a day or two of his arrival in England,” I remarked. “I cannot understand it!” she exclaimed, passionately. “Stephen and I have not met for many years--he has been living in South America, and I have been in Paris--but he wrote to me constantly, and in every letter he repeated how eagerly he was looking forward to seeing me again. I cannot think that he would have come down here just as an ordinary visit of civility before coming to me, or sending for me to come to him. There must be something behind it--something of which I do not know.” “You know, of course, that Naselton Hall is shut up and that the Naseltons have gone to Italy?” I asked her. “They told me so at the police station,” she answered. “I have sent Lady Naselton a telegram. It is a long time since I saw Stephen, and one does not tell everything in letters. He may have formed great friendships of which I have never heard.” “Or great enmities,” I suggested, softly. “Or enmities,” she repeated, thoughtfully. “Yes; he may have made enemies. That is possible. He was passionate, and he was wilful. He was the sort of a man who made enemies.”