ite
easily if he had no accident. He said that he had started in the car,
and then walked back home a mile or so, and felt all the better for it.'

'Did he say any more?'

'Nothing, as well as I remember,' the witness said. 'I was very sleepy,
and I dropped off again in a few moments. I just remember my husband
turning his light out, and that is all. I never saw him again alive.'

'And you heard nothing in the night?'

'No: I never woke until my maid brought my tea in the morning at seven
o'clock. She closed the door leading to my husband's room, as she always
did, and I supposed him to be still there. He always needed a great
deal of sleep. He sometimes slept until quite late in the morning. I
had breakfast in my sitting-room. It was about ten when I heard that
my husband's body had been found.' The witness dropped her head and
silently waited for her dismissal.

But it was not to be yet.

'Mrs Manderson.' The coroner's voice was sympathetic, but it had a hint
of firmness in it now. 'The question I am going to put to you must, in
these sad circumstances, be a painful one; but it is my duty to ask it.
Is it the fact that your relations with your late husband had not been,
for some time past, relations of mutual affection and confidence? Is it
the fact that there was an estrangement between you?'

The lady drew herself up again and faced her questioner, the colour
rising in her cheeks. 'If that question is necessary,' she said
with cold distinctness, 'I will answer it so that there shall be no
misunderstanding. During the last few months of my husband's life
his attitude towards me had given me great anxiety and sorrow. He had
changed towards me; he had become very reserved, and seemed mistrustful.
I saw much less of him than before; he seemed to prefer to be alone. I
can give no explanation at all of the change. I tried to work against
it; I did all I could with justice to my own dignity, as I thought.
Something was between us, I did not know what, and he never told me.
My own obstinate pride prevented me from asking what it was in so many
words; I only made a point of being to him exactly as I had always been,
so far as he would allow me. I suppose I shall never know now what it
was.' The witness, whose voice had trembled in spite of her self-control
over the last few sentences, drew down her veil when she had said this,
and stood erect and quiet.

One of the jury asked a question, not without obvious hesitati