"Mr. Armstrong and ladies!" said this stranger--I knew he was a stranger
by the studied formality of the former's bow--"I have made a few
inquiries since I came here a short time ago, and I find that there is
one young lady in the house who ought to be able to tell me better than
any one else under what circumstances Mrs. Lansing breathed her last. I
allude to her niece, who slept in the adjoining room. Is that young lady
here? Her name, if I remember rightly, is Camerden--Miss Dorothy
Camerden."

A movement as of denial passed from group to group down the hall, and,
while no one glanced toward the library and some did glance upstairs, I
felt the dart of sudden fear--or was it hope--that Dorothy, hearing her
name called, would leave the conservatory and proudly confront the
speaker in face of this whole suspicious throng. But no Dorothy
appeared. On the contrary, it was Gilbertine who turned, and, with an
air of authority for which no one was prepared, asked in tones vibrating
with feeling:

"Has this gentleman the official right to question who was and who was
not with my aunt when she died?"

Mr. Armstrong, who showed his surprise as ingenuously as he did every
other emotion, glanced up at the light figure hovering over them from
the staircase, and made out to answer:

"This gentleman has every right, Miss Murray. He is the coroner of the
town, accustomed to inquire into all cases of sudden death."

"Then," she vehemently rejoined, her pale cheeks breaking out into a
scarlet flush, above which her eyes shone with an almost unearthly
brilliancy, "do not summon Dorothy Camerden. She is not the witness you
want. I am. I am the one who uttered that scream; I am the one who saw
our aunt die. Dorothy cannot tell you what took place in her room and at
her bedside, for Dorothy was not there; but _I_ can."

Amazed, not as others were, at the assertion itself, but at the manner
and publicity of the utterance, I contemplated this surprising girl in
ever-increasing wonder. Always beautiful, always spirited and proud, she
looked at that moment as if nothing in the shape of fear, or even
contumely, could touch her. She faced the astonishment of her best
friends with absolute fearlessness, and before the general murmur could
break into words, added:

"I feel it my duty to speak thus publicly, because, by keeping silent so
long, I have allowed a false impression to go about. Stunned with
terror, I found it impossible to spea