the servants pass in from the hall, and your cousin come out
there after her revival from her fainting fit?"

Mary Leavenworth's violet eyes opened wonderingly.

"Yes, sir; but that was nothing."

"You remember, however, her coming into the hall?"

"Yes, sir."

"With a paper in her hand?"

"Paper?" and she wheeled suddenly and looked at her cousin. "Did you
have a paper, Eleanore?"

The moment was intense. Eleanore Leavenworth, who at the first mention
of the word paper had started perceptibly, rose to her feet at this
naive appeal, and opening her lips, seemed about to speak, when the
coroner, with a strict sense of what was regular, lifted his hand with
decision, and said:

"You need not ask your cousin, Miss; but let us hear what you have to
say yourself."

Immediately, Eleanore Leavenworth sank back, a pink spot breaking out on
either cheek; while a slight murmur testified to the disappointment
of those in the room, who were more anxious to have their curiosity
gratified than the forms of law adhered to.

Satisfied with having done his duty, and disposed to be easy with so
charming a witness, the coroner repeated his question. "Tell us, if you
please, if you saw any such thing in her hand?"

"I? Oh, no, no; I saw nothing."

Being now questioned in relation to the events of the previous night,
she had no new light to throw upon the subject. She acknowledged her
uncle to have been a little reserved at dinner, but no more so than at
previous times when annoyed by some business anxiety.

Asked if she had seen her uncle again that evening, she said no, that
she had been detained in her room. That the sight of him, sitting in his
seat at the head of the table, was the very last remembrance she had of
him.

There was something so touching, so forlorn, and yet so unobtrusive, in
this simple recollection of hers, that a look of sympathy passed slowly
around the room.

I even detected Mr. Gryce softening towards the inkstand. But Eleanore
Leavenworth sat unmoved.

"Was your uncle on ill terms with any one?" was now asked. "Had he
valuable papers or secret sums of money in his possession?"

To all these inquiries she returned an equal negative.

"Has your uncle met any stranger lately, or received any important
letter during the last few weeks, which might seem in any way to throw
light upon this mystery?"

There was the slightest perceptible hesitation in her voice, as she
replied: "No, not to my kn