The front door was unlocked, and we walked into the church in silence.
Around the pillars holly and ivy were twined. Great armfuls of the
shrubs had been flung here and there along the walls in heaps, and a
step-ladder stood in one of the aisles, showing that the decoration of
the edifice was not yet complete. A subdued melancholy had settled
down on my erstwhile vivacious companion, the inevitable reaction so
characteristic of the artistic temperament, augmented doubtless by the
solemnity of the place, around whose walls in brass and marble were
sculptured memorials of her ancient race.
'You promised,' I said at last, 'to tell me how you came to suspect--'
'Not here, not here,' she whispered; then rising from the pew in which
she had seated herself, she said:--
'Let us go, I am in no mood for working this morning. I shall finish
the decoration in the afternoon.'
We came out into the cool and brilliant sunlight again, and as we
turned homeward, her spirits immediately began to rise.
'I am anxious to know,' I persisted, 'why you came to suspect a man
whom at first you believed innocent.'
'I am not sure but I believe him innocent now, although I am forced to
the conclusion that he knows where the treasure is.
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