nine owner? The same lady might have worn or carried
yellow roses."

Perhaps it was because of my own desire to help her that these other men
had joined their efforts to mine to ease the way as much as possible.

The coroner looked a little uncomfortable, for he began to note the tide
of sympathy turning toward the troubled girl.

"Yellow roses do not necessarily imply a lady visitor," he said, rather
more kindly. "A man in evening dress might have worn one."

To his evident surprise, as well as to my own, this remark, intended to
be soothing, had quite the opposite effect.

"That is not at all probable," said Miss Lloyd quite angrily. "Mr.
Porter was in the office last evening; if he was wearing a yellow rose
at the time, let him say so."

"I was not," said Mr. Porter quietly, but looking amazed at the sudden
outburst of the girl.

"Of course you weren't!" Miss Lloyd went on, still in the same excited
way. "Men don't wear roses nowadays, except perhaps at a ball; and,
anyway, the gold bag surely implies that a woman was there!"

"It seems to," said Mr. Monroe; and then, unable longer to keep up her
brave resistance, Florence Lloyd fainted.

Mrs. Pierce wrung her hands and moaned in a helpless fashion. Elsa
started forward to attend her young mistress, but it was the two
neighbors who were jurors, Mr. Hamilton and Mr. Porter, who carried the
unconscious girl from the room.

Gregory Hall looked concerned, but made no movement to aid, and I
marvelled afresh at such strange actions in a man betrothed to a
particularly beautiful woman.

Several women in the audience hurried from the room, and in a few
moments the two jurors returned.

"Miss Lloyd will soon be all right, I think," said Mr. Porter to the
coroner. "My wife is with her, and one or two other ladies. I think we
may proceed with our work here."

There was something about Mr. Lemuel Porter that made men accept his
dictum, and without further remark Mr. Monroe called the next witness,
Mr. Roswell Randolph, and a tall man, with an intellectual face, came
forward.

While the coroner was putting the formal and preliminary questions
to Mr. Randolph, Parmalee quietly drew my attention to a whispered
conversation going on between Elsa and Louis.

If this girl had fainted instead of Miss Lloyd, I should not have been
surprised for she seemed on the very verge of nervous collapse. She
seemed, too, to be accusing the man of something, which he vigorously