ught the tickets and
talked in his brilliant way until the train arrived. It only stopped
for a moment.

"He put me on, then a spell came over him suddenly, I don't know what,
and he pushed me off the steps, just as the train was moving out--and
said the very thing you heard him say in here--and rode away and left
me there, deserted."

She told it all in a dry-voiced way that cost her an effort, as
Garrison felt and comprehended. He had turned about, in sheer sympathy
for her predicament.

"What happened then?"

"I saw in a paper, two days later, he had been detained in a town in
Ohio as being mentally unbalanced. In the meantime I had written to my
Uncle John, while we were waiting at the station, telling him briefly I
was married and to whom. The note was posted not five minutes before a
postman came along and took up the letters in the box. I couldn't have
stopped it had I wished to, and it never occurred to my mind to stop
it, anyway."

"What did your uncle reply?"

"He wrote at once that he was thoroughly pleased. He had long hoped I
might marry someone other than Theodore. He confessed that his will
contained a clause to the effect that I should inherit no more than
five thousand dollars, should I not have been married at least one
month prior to his death, to a healthy, respectable man who was not my
cousin.

"I dared not write that I had been deserted, or that Mr. Fairfax might
be insane. I couldn't tell what to do. I hardly knew what to expect,
or what I was, or anything. I could only pretend I was off on my
honeymoon--and wait. Then came uncle's sudden death, and my lawyer
sent me word about the will, asking when he should file it for probate.
Then--then I knew I had to have a _sane_ husband."

"And the will is not yet filed?"

"Not yet. And fortunately Mr. Trowbridge has had to be away."

Garrison pursued the topic of the will for purposes made necessary by
his recent discoveries concerning a new one.

"Mr. Trowbridge had your uncle's testament in his keeping?"

Dorothy shook her head. "No. I believe he conferred with uncle's
lawyer, just after his death, and read it there."

"Where did your uncle's lawyer live?"

"In Albany."

"Do you know his name?"

"I think it is Spikeman. Why?"

Garrison was looking at her again with professional coldness, despite
the fact that his heart was fairly burning in his breast.

"Because," he said, "I learned from your stepbrother, Paul D