er body lying stark and cold in her bed.

"They said I showed little feeling." He had moved off again and spoke
from somewhere in the shadows. "Do you wonder at this after such a
manifest stroke by a benevolent Providence? My wife being dead, Roger
was saved to us! It was the one song of my still undisciplined soul, and
I had to assume coldness lest they should see the greatness of my joy.
A wicked and guilty rejoicing you will say, and you are right. But I
had no memory then of the part I had played in this fatality. I had
forgotten my reckless flight from the grotto, which left her with no aid
but that of her own triumphant spirit to help her over those treacherous
rocks. The necessity for keeping secret this part of our disgraceful
story led me to exert myself to keep it out of my own mind. It has only
come back to me in all its force since a new horror, a new suspicion,
has driven me to review carefully every incident of that awful night.

"I was never a man of much logic, and when they came to me on that
morning of which I have just spoken and took me in where she lay and
pointed to her beautiful cold body stretched out in seeming peace under
the satin coverlet, and then to the pile of dainty clothes lying neatly
folded on a chair with just one fairy slipper on top, I shuddered at her
fate but asked no questions, not even when one of the women of the house
mentioned the circumstance of the single slipper and said that a search
should be made for its mate. Nor was I as much impressed as one would
naturally expect by the whisper dropped in my ear that something was
the matter with her wrists. It is true that I lifted the lace they had
carefully spread over them and examined the discoloration which extended
like a ring about each pearly arm; but having no memories of any
violence offered her (I had not so much as laid hand upon her in the
grotto), these marks failed to rouse my interest. But--and now I must
leap a year in my story--there came a time when both of these facts
recurred to my mind with startling distinctness and clamoured for
explanation.

"I had risen above the shock which such a death following such events
would naturally occasion even in one of my blunted sensibilities, and
was striving to live a new life under the encouragement of my now fully
reconciled father, when accident forced me to re-enter the grotto where
I had never stepped foot since that night. A favourite dog in chase of
some innocent p