s before Mr. Jeffrey came back with a slip of paper
in his hand and a very much relieved look on his face. 'The deed
was premeditated,' he cried. 'My unfortunate wife has misunderstood
my affection for her.' And from being a very much broken-down man,
he stood up straight and tall and prepared himself very quietly to
go to the Moore house. That is all I can tell about the way the
news was received by him."

Were these details necessary? Many appeared to regard them as
futile and uncalled for. But Coroner Z. was never known to waste
time on trivialities, and if he called for these facts, those who
knew him best felt certain that they were meant as a preparation for
Mr. Jeffrey's testimony, which was now called for.

XII

THRUST AND PARRY

When Francis Jeffrey's hand fell from his forehead and he turned to
face the assembled people, an instinctive compassion arose in every
breast at sight of his face, which, if not open in its expression,
was at least surcharged with the deepest misery. In a flash the
scene took on new meaning. Many remembered that less than a month
before his eye had been joyous and his figure a conspicuous one
among the favored sons of fortune. And now he stood in sight of a
crowd, drawn together mainly by curiosity, to explain as best he
might why this great happiness and hope had come to a sudden
termination, and his bride of a fortnight had sought death rather
than continue to live under the same roof with him.

So much for what I saw on the faces about me. What my own face
revealed I can not say. I only know that I strove to preserve an
impassive exterior. If I secretly held this man's misery to be a
mask hiding untold passions and the darkness of an unimaginable
deed, it was not for me to disclose in this presence either my
suspicions or my fears. To me, as to those about me, he apparently
was a man who at some sacrifice to his pride, would, yet be able
to explain whatever seemed dubious in the mysterious case in which
he had become involved.

His wife's uncle, who to all appearance shared the general curiosity
as to the effect which this woeful tragedy had had upon his niece's
most interested survivor, eyed with a certain cold interest,
eminently in keeping with his general character, the pallid forehead,
sunken eyes and nervously trembling lip of the once "handsome
Jeffrey" till that gentleman, rousing from his depression, manifested
a realization of what was require