Why should it?
He had, as it seemed, no personal grudge against Le Maitre, whose death had been evidently an accident.
A man who bore an office akin to that of magistrate for the islands came down from a house near the harbour, and the story was repeated to him.
When Caius had listened to the evidence given before this official personage, hearing the tale again that he had already heard many times in a few minutes, and told what he himself had seen, he began to wonder how he could still harbour in his mind the belief in O'Shea's guilt.

He found, too, that none of these people knew enough about Josephine to see any special interest attaching to the story, except the fact that her husband, returning from a long voyage, had been drowned almost within sight of her house.

"Ah, poor lady! poor lady!" they said; and thus saying, and shaking their heads, they dispersed to eat their dinners.
Caius procured the bundle of letters which had come for him by this first mail of the year.

He sauntered along the beach, soon getting out of sight and hearing of the little community, who were not given to walking upon a beach that was not in this case a highroad to any place.
He was on the shingle of the bay, and he soon found a nook under a high black cliff where the sun beat down right warmly.

He had not opened his letters; his mind did not yet admit of old interests.
The days were not long passed in which men who continued to be good husbands and fathers and staunch friends killed their enemies, when necessary, with a good conscience.