r, your fears are utterly groundless," he laughed. "What
can the fellow possibly know? He is assured that I am dead, for he
signed my certificate and followed me to my grave at Woking. A man who
attends his friend's funeral has no suspicion that the dead is still
living, depend upon it. If there is any object in this world that is
convincing it is a corpse."

"I merely tell you the result of my observations," she said. "In my
opinion he has come here to learn what he can."

"He can learn nothing," answered the "dead" man. "If it were his
confounded friend Jevons, now, we might have some apprehension; for
the ingenuity of that man is, I've heard, absolutely astounding. Even
Scotland Yard seeks his aid in the solving of the more difficult
criminal problems."

"I tell you plainly that I fear Ethelwynn may expose us," his wife
went on slowly, a distinctly anxious look upon her countenance. "As
you know, there is a coolness between us, and rather than risk losing
the doctor altogether she may make a clean breast of the affair."

"No, no, my dear. Rest assured that she will never betray us,"
answered Courtenay, with a light reassuring laugh. "True, you are not
very friendly, yet you must recollect that she and I are friends. Her
interests are identical with our own; therefore to expose us would be
to expose herself at the same time."

"A woman sometimes acts without forethought."

"Quite true; but Ethelwynn is not one of those. She's careful to
preserve her own position in the eyes of her lover, knowing quite well
that to tell the truth would be to expose her own baseness. A man may
overlook many offences in the woman he loves, but this particular one
of which she is guilty a man never forgives."

His words went deep into my heart. Was not this further proof that the
crime--for undoubtedly a crime had been accomplished in that house at
Kew--had been committed by the hand of the woman I so fondly loved?
All was so amazing, so utterly bewildering, that I stood there
concealed by the tree, motionless as though turned to stone.

There was a motive wanting in it all. Yet I ask you who read this
narrative of mine if, like myself, you would not have been staggered
into dumbness at seeing and hearing a man whom you had certified to be
dead, moving and speaking, and, moreover, in his usual health?

"He loves her!" his wife exclaimed, speaking of me. "He would forgive
her anything. My own opinion is that if we would be absolu