now, she evidently being near her fiftieth year, though the clear ivory complexion, the black curling hair, in which scarcely a grey streak was visible, the soft rounded features and the dark eyes, still full of lustre, proclaimed distinctly what her beauty must have been in long past days. Also, Julian noticed, as she held out a white slim hand and murmured some words of cordial welcome to him, that her figure, lithe and sinuous, was one that might have become a woman young enough to have been her daughter. Only--he thought--it was almost too lithe and sinuous: it reminded him too much of a tiger he had once stalked in India, and of how he had seen the striped body creeping in and out of the jungle. "This is Madame Carmaux," Sebastian said to Julian, as the latter bowed before her, "a relation of my late mother. She has been here many years--even before that mother died. And--she has been one to me as well as fulfilling all the duties of the lady of the house both for my father and, now, for myself." Then, after Julian had muttered some suitable words and had once more received a gracious smile from the owner of those dark eyes, Sebastian said, "Now, you would like to make some kind of toilette, I suppose, before the evening meal. Come, I will show you your room." And he led the way up the vast campeachy-wood staircase to the floor above. Tropical nights fall swiftly directly the sun has disappeared, as it had now done behind the still gilded crests of the Cockscomb range, and Julian, standing on his balcony after the other had left him and gazing out on all around, wondered what was to be the outcome of this visit to Honduras. He pondered, too, as he had pondered before, whether George Ritherdon had in truth been a madman or one who had plotted a strange scheme of revenge against his brother; a scheme which now could never be perfected. Or--for he mused on this also--had George Ritherdon spoken the truth, had Sebastian---- The current of his thoughts was broken, even as he arrived at this point, by hearing beneath him on the under balcony the voice of Sebastian speaking in tones low but clear and distinct--by hearing that voice say, as though in answer to another's question: "Know--of course he must know! But knowledge is not always proof."
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