shall prevent me from getting my divorce."

"That you may marry this woman!" she blazed forth, jumping from her
seat, with Lettice's book in her hand. It had been lying before her, and
the name had caught her eye. "You shall never marry her--I swear it by
my father's grave. You shall never divorce me!"

She flung the book in his face.

"Let me pass!" he said, moving quietly to the door.

"Never!"

She seized the dagger, and stood before him, swaying with her violent
emotion.

"Let me pass," he said again, still pressing forward.

She raised the weapon in her hand. Not a moment too soon he grasped her
wrist, and tried to take it from her with his other hand.

There was a struggle--a loud scream--a heavy fall--and silence.

A minute later Mrs. Gorman, attracted by the noise, burst into the room.

Cora was lying on the floor, and Alan, with white face and bloody hand,
was drawing the fatal weapon from her breast.

Mrs. Gorman's first act was to rush to the open window, and call for the
police. Then she knelt by Cora's body, and tried to staunch the flowing
blood.

A lodger from the floor beneath, who had come in behind the landlady,
was looking at the prostrate body. He was a medical student, and perhaps
thought it necessary to give his opinion in a case of this sort.

"She cannot live ten minutes," he said; but that did not prevent him
from assisting Mrs. Gorman in her work.

Alan had staggered back against the wall, still holding the dagger in
his hand. He scarcely knew what had happened, but the words of the last
speaker forced themselves upon him with terrible distinctness.

"My God," he cried, "am I a murderer?"

And he fell upon the chair, and buried his face in his hands.

CHAPTER XXIV.

HOPELESS.

"If she dies," Graham said to his wife, in answer to Clara's anxious
questioning, on the morning after Alan Walcott's arrest, "it will be a
case of murder or manslaughter. If she gets over it he will be charged
with an attempt to murder, or to do grievous bodily harm, and as there
would be her evidence to be considered in that case the jury would be
sure to take the worst view of it. That might mean five or ten years,
perhaps more. The best thing that could happen for him would be her
death, then they might incline to believe his statement, and a clever
counsel might get him off with a few months' imprisonment."

"Poor man," said Clara, "how very shocking it is!" She was thinking not
of A