time in the wood----"

"Silence!"

This word was shot at her by Miss Demarest, who had risen to her full
height and now fairly flamed upon them all in her passionate
indignation. "I will not listen to such words till I have finished all I
have to say and put these liars to the blush. My mother _was_ with me,
and this woman witnessed our good-night embrace, and then showed my
mother to her own room. I watched them going. They went down the hall to
the left and around a certain corner. I stood looking after them till
they turned this corner, then I closed my door and began to take off my
hat. But I wasn't quite satisfied with the good-night which had passed
between my poor mother and myself, and presently I opened my door and
ran down the hall and around the corner on a chance of finding her room.
I don't remember very well how that hall looked. I passed several doors
seemingly shut for the night, and should have turned back, confused, if
at that moment I had not spied the landlady's figure, your figure,
madam, coming out of one room on your way to another. You were carrying
a pitcher, and I made haste and ran after you and reached the door just
before you turned to shut it. Can you deny that, or that you stepped
aside while I ran in and gave my mother another hug? If you can and do,
then you are a dangerous and lying woman, or I----But I won't admit
that I'm not all right. It is you, base and untruthful woman, who for
some end I cannot fathom persist in denying facts on which my honour, if
not my life, depends. Why, gentlemen, you, one of you at least, have
heard me describe the very room in which I saw my mother. It is
imprinted on my mind. I didn't know at the time that I took especial
notice of it, but hardly a detail escaped me. The paper on the wall----"

"We have been looking through the rooms," interpolated the coroner. "We
do not find any papered with the muddy pink you talk about."

She stared, drew back from them all, and finally sank into a chair. "You
do not find----But you have not been shown them all."

"I think so."

"You have not. There _is_ such a room. I could not have dreamed it."

Silence met this suggestion.

Throwing up her hands like one who realises for the first time that the
battle is for life, she let an expression of her despair and desolation
rush in frenzy from her lips:

"It's a conspiracy. The whole thing is a conspiracy. If my mother had
had money on her or had worn valuable je