icture was more tragic still. I have no business
with Mrs. Zabriskie's affairs; but as I passed upstairs to my
room an hour ago, I caught a fleeting vision of her tall form,
with the arms thrown up over her head in a paroxysm of feeling
which made her as oblivious to my presence as her husband had
been several hours before. Were the words that escaped her
lips 'Thank God we have no children!' or was this exclamation
suggested to me by the passion and unrestrained impulse of her
action?"

Side by side with these lines, I, Ebenezer Gryce, placed the following
extracts from my own diary:

"Watched the Zabriskie mansion for five hours this morning,
from the second story window of an adjoining hotel. Saw the
Doctor when he drove away on his round of visits, and saw him
when he returned. A colored man accompanied him.

"To-day I followed Mrs. Zabriskie. I had a motive for this,
the nature of which I think it wisest not to divulge. She
went first to a house in Washington Place where I am told her
mother lives. Here she stayed some time, after which she drove
down to Canal Street, where she did some shopping, and later
stopped at the hospital, into which I took the liberty of
following her. She seemed to know many there, and passed from
cot to cot with a smile in which I alone discerned the sadness
of a broken heart. When she left, I left also, without having
learned anything beyond the fact that Mrs. Zabriskie is one
who does her duty in sorrow as in happiness. A rare and
trustworthy woman I should say, and yet her husband does not
trust her. Why?

* * * * *

"I have spent this day in accumulating details in regard to
Dr. and Mrs. Zabriskie's life previous to the death of Mr.
Hasbrouck. I learned from sources it would be unwise to quote
just here, that Mrs. Zabriskie had not lacked enemies ready to
charge her with coquetry; that while she had never sacrificed
her dignity in public, more than one person had been heard to
declare, that Dr. Zabriskie was fortunate in being blind,
since the sight of his wife's beauty would have but poorly
compensated him for the pain he would have suffered in seeing
how that beauty was admired.

"That all gossip is more or less tinged with exaggeration I
have no doubt, ye