ains to indicate the part which she had played
throughout. There can be no doubt that Stapleton exercised an
influence over her which may have been love or may have been
fear, or very possibly both, since they are by no means
incompatible emotions. It was, at least, absolutely effective. At
his command she consented to pass as his sister, though he found
the limits of his power over her when he endeavoured to make her
the direct accessory to murder. She was ready to warn Sir Henry
so far as she could without implicating her husband, and again
and again she tried to do so. Stapleton himself seems to have
been capable of jealousy, and when he saw the baronet paying
court to the lady, even though it was part of his own plan, still
he could not help interrupting with a passionate outburst which
revealed the fiery soul which his self-contained manner so
cleverly concealed. By encouraging the intimacy he made it
certain that Sir Henry would frequently come to Merripit House
and that he would sooner or later get the opportunity which he
desired. On the day of the crisis, however, his wife turned
suddenly against him. She had learned something of the death of
the convict, and she knew that the hound was being kept in the
out-house on the evening that Sir Henry was coming to dinner. She
taxed her husband with his intended crime, and a furious scene
followed, in which he showed her for the first time that she had
a rival in his love. Her fidelity turned in an instant to bitter
hatred and he saw that she would betray him. He tied her up,
therefore, that she might have no chance of warning Sir Henry,
and he hoped, no doubt, that when the whole country-side put down
the baronet's death to the curse of his family, as they certainly
would do, he could win his wife back to accept an accomplished
fact and to keep silent upon what she knew. In this I fancy that
in any case he made a miscalculation, and that, if we had not
been there, his doom would none the less have been sealed. A
woman of Spanish blood does not condone such an injury so
lightly. And now, my dear Watson, without referring to my notes,
I cannot give you a more detailed account of this curious case. I
do not know that anything essential has been left unexplained."

"He could not hope to frighten Sir Henry to death as he had done
the old uncle with his bogie hound."

"The beast was savage and half-starved. If its appearance did not
frighten its victim to death, at leas