to say--what could I say,
in response to such a declaration, following so immediately upon his
warm assertion of her innocence? Nothing. With that indefinable chill
between us, which had come I know not how, I felt tongue-tied.

He saw my embarrassment, possibly my emotion, for he smiled somewhat
bitterly, and put a step or so between us before he remarked:

"Miss Murray has my good wishes. Out of respect to her position, I shall
show her a friend's attention while we remain in this house. That is all
I have to say, Walter. You and I have held our last conversation on this
subject."

He was gone before I had sufficiently recovered to realise that in this
conversation I had had no part, neither had it contained any explanation
of the very facts which had once formed our greatest grounds for
doubt--namely, Beaton's dream; the smothered cry uttered behind
Sinclair's shoulder when he first made known the deadly qualities of
the little vial; and, lastly, the strange desire acknowledged to by both
these young ladies, to touch and hold an object calculated rather to
repel than to attract the normal feminine heart.

At every previous stage of this ever-shifting drama my instinct had been
to set my wits against the facts, and, if I could, puzzle out the
mystery. But I felt no such temptation now. My one desire was to act,
and that immediately. Dorothy, for all Gilbertine's intimation to the
contrary, held in her own breast the key to the enigma. Otherwise she
would not have ventured upon the surprising and necessarily unpalatable
advice to Sinclair--an advice he seemed to have followed--not to marry
Gilbertine Murray at the time proposed. Nothing short of a secret
acquaintanceship with facts unknown as yet to the rest of us could have
nerved her to such an act.

My one hope, then, of understanding the matter lay with her. To seek her
at once in the place where I had been told she awaited me seemed the
only course to take. If any real gratitude underlay the look of trust
which she had given me at the termination of our last interview, she
would reward my confidence by unbosoming herself to me.

I was at the door of the boudoir immediately upon forming this
resolution. Finding it ajar, I pushed it softly open, and as softly
entered. To my astonishment the place was very dark. Not only had the
shades been drawn down, but the shutters had been closed, so that it
was with difficulty I detected the slight, black-robed figure wh