procession passing through this street to see just
the little I had seen to-day. The detective's adventure was like to
make the house notorious. For several minutes after I had left its
neighborhood my imagination pictured room after room shut up from the
light of day, but bearing within them the impalpable aura of those
two shadows flitting through them like the ghosts of ghosts, as the
detective had tellingly put it.

The heart has its strange surprises. Through my whole ride and the
indulgence in these thoughts I was conscious of a great inner revulsion
against all I had intimated and even honestly felt while talking with
the inspector. Perhaps this is what this wise old official expected. He
had let me talk, and the inevitable reaction followed. I could now see
only Mr. Grey's goodness and claims to respect, and began to hate myself
that I had not been immediately impressed by the inspector's views, and
shown myself more willing to drop every suspicion against the august
personage I had presumed to associate with crime. What had given me the
strength to persist? Loyalty to my lover? His innocence had not been
involved. Indeed, every word uttered in the inspector's office had
gone to prove that he no longer occupied a leading place in police
calculations: that their eyes were turned elsewhere, and that I had only
to be patient to see Mr. Durand quite cleared in their minds.

But was this really so? Was he as safe as that? What if this new clue
failed? What if they failed to find Sears or lay hands on the doubtful
Wellgood? Would Mr. Durand be released without a trial? Should we hear
nothing more of the strange and to many the suspicious circumstances
which linked him to this crime? It would be expecting too much from
either police or official discrimination.

No; Mr. Durand would never be completely exonerated till the true
culprit was found and all explanations made. I had therefore been simply
fighting his battles when I pointed out what I thought to be the weak
place in their present theory, and, sore as I felt in contemplation
of my seemingly heartless action, I was not the unimpressionable,
addle-pated nonentity I must have seemed to the inspector.

Yet my comfort was small and the effort it took to face Mr. Grey and my
young patient was much greater than I had anticipated. I blushed as I
approached to take my place at Miss Grey's bedside, and, had her father
been as suspicious of me at that moment as I was