e morning paper, laid open at Wardrop's plate.

She must have followed my eyes, for we reached for it simultaneously.
She was nearer than I, and her quick eye caught the name. Then I put my
hand over the heading and she flushed with indignation.

"You are not to read it now," I said, meeting her astonished gaze as
best I could. "Please let me have it. I promise you I will give it to
you--almost immediately."

"You are very rude," she said without relinquishing the paper. "I saw a
part of that; it is about my father!"

"Drink your coffee, please," I pleaded. "I will let you read it then. On
my honor."

She looked at me; then she withdrew her hand and sat erect.

"How can you be so childish!" she exclaimed. "If there is anything in
that paper that it--will hurt me to learn, is a cup of coffee going to
make it any easier?"

I gave up then. I had always thought that people heard bad news better
when they had been fortified with something to eat, and I had a very
distinct recollection that Fred had made Edith drink something--tea
probably--before he told her that Billy had fallen off the back fence
and would have to have a stitch taken in his lip. Perhaps I should have
offered Margery tea instead of coffee. But as it was, she sat, stonily
erect, staring at the paper, and feeling that evasion would be useless,
I told her what had happened, breaking the news as gently as I could.

I stood by her helplessly through the tearless agony that followed, and
cursed myself for a blundering ass. I had said that he had been
accidentally shot, and I said it with the paper behind me, but she put
the evasion aside bitterly.

"Accidentally!" she repeated. The first storm of grief over, she lifted
her head from where it had rested on her arms and looked at me, scorning
my subterfuge. "He was murdered. That's the word I didn't have time to
read! Murdered! And you sat back and let it happen. I went to you in
time and you didn't do anything. No one did anything!"

I did not try to defend myself. How could I? And afterward when she sat
up and pushed back the damp strands of hair from her eyes, she was more
reasonable.

"I did not mean what I said about your not having done anything," she
said, almost childishly. "No one could have done more. It was to happen,
that's all."

But even then I knew she had trouble in store that she did not suspect.
What would she do when she heard that Wardrop was under grave suspicion?
Between her dea