pond to the demand of the coroner and answer the first few
opening inquiries.

But what can express the anxiety of that moment to me? Gentle as she now
appeared, she was capable of great wrath, as I knew. Was she going to
reiterate her suspicions here? Did she hate as well as mistrust her
cousin? Would she dare assert in this presence, and before the world,
what she found it so easy to utter in the privacy of her own room
and the hearing of the one person concerned? Did she wish to? Her own
countenance gave me no clue to her intentions, and, in my anxiety,
I turned once more to look at Eleanore. But she, in a dread and
apprehension I could easily understand, had recoiled at the first
intimation that her cousin was to speak, and now sat with her face
covered from sight, by hands blanched to an almost deathly whiteness.

The testimony of Mary Leavenworth was short. After some few questions,
mostly referring to her position in the house and her connection with
its deceased master, she was asked to relate what she knew of the murder
itself, and of its discovery by her cousin and the servants.

Lifting up a brow that seemed never to have known till now the shadow of
care or trouble, and a voice that, whilst low and womanly, rang like a
bell through the room, she replied:

"You ask me, gentlemen, a question which I cannot answer of my own
personal knowledge. I know nothing of this murder, nor of its discovery,
save what has come to me through the lips of others."

My heart gave a bound of relief, and I saw Eleanore Leavenworth's hands
drop from her brow like stone, while a flickering gleam as of hope fled
over her face, and then died away like sunlight leaving marble.

"For, strange as it may seem to you," Mary earnestly continued, the
shadow of a past horror revisiting her countenance, "I did not enter
the room where my uncle lay. I did not even think of doing so; my only
impulse was to fly from what was so horrible and heartrending. But
Eleanore went in, and she can tell you----"

"We will question Miss Eleanore Leavenworth later," interrupted the
coroner, but very gently for him. Evidently the grace and elegance of
this beautiful woman were making their impression. "What we want to know
is what _you_ saw. You say you cannot tell us of anything that passed in
the room at the time of the discovery?"

"No, sir."

"Only what occurred in the hall?"

"Nothing occurred in the hall," she innocently remarked.

"Did not