e Gables.

Trent went in silence, his thoughts whirling, dancing insanely to a
chorus of "Fool! fool!" All that he alone knew, all that he guessed and
suspected of this affair rushed through his brain in a rout; but the
touch of her unnerved hand upon his arm never for an instant left his
consciousness, filling him with an exaltation that enraged and
bewildered him. He was still cursing himself furiously behind the mask
of conventional solicitude that he turned to the lady when he had
attended her to the house, and seen her sink upon a couch in the morning
room. Raising her veil, she thanked him gravely and frankly, with a look
of sincere gratitude in her eyes. She was much better now, she said, and
a cup of tea would work a miracle upon her. She hoped she had not taken
him away from anything important. She was ashamed of herself; she
thought she could go through with it, but she had not expected those
last questions. "I am glad you did not hear me," she said when he
explained. "But of course you will read it all in the reports. It shook
me so to have to speak of that," she added simply, "and to keep from
making an exhibition of myself took it out of me. And all those staring
men by the door! Thank you again for helping me when I asked you.... I
thought I might," she ended queerly, with a little tired smile; and
Trent took himself away, his hand still quivering from the cool touch of
her fingers.

CHAPTER VIII

A HOT SCENT

"Come in," called Trent.

Mr. Cupples entered his sitting-room at the hotel. It was the early
evening of the day on which the coroner's jury, without leaving the box,
had pronounced the expected denunciation of a person or persons unknown.
Trent, with a hasty glance upward, continued his intent study of what
lay in a photographic dish of enameled metal, which he moved slowly
about in the light of the window. He looked very pale and his movements
were nervous.

"Sit on the sofa," he advised. "The chairs are a job lot bought at the
sale after the suppression of the Holy Inquisition in Spain. This is a
pretty good negative," he went on, holding it up to the light with his
head at the angle of discriminating judgment. "Washed enough now, I
think. Let us leave it to dry, and get rid of all this mess."

Mr. Cupples, as the other busily cleared the table of a confusion of
basins, dishes, racks, boxes and bottles, picked up first one and then
another of the objects and studied them with inno