"Why should it be?"

"Who can say? I wish to goodness I had helped your butler to raise Sir
Alan's lifeless body. But about this family dispute. Was there a
scene--tears, recriminations?"

"Not a bit. You don't know Rita. We used to call her Rita because, as
boys, we teased her by saying her name was Margharita, and not Margaret"

"Why?"

"She has such a foreign manner and style." "How did she acquire them?"

"She was a big girl, six years old, and tall for her age, when her parents
settled down in England. She first spoke Italian, and picked up Italian
ways from her nurse, an old party who was devotedly attached to her. Even
Alan was a good Italian linguist, and given to foreign manners when a
little chap. But Harrow soon knocked them out of him. Rita retained them."

"I see. A curious household. I should have expected this young lady to
upbraid her brother after the style of the prima donna in grand opera."

"No. He told me she laughed at him, and invited him to witness the trying
on of a fancy dress costume, the 'Queen of Night,' which she wore at a
_bal masqué_ the night he was murdered."

"When did she get married?"

"Last January, at Naples, very suddenly, and without the knowledge of any
of her relatives."