e."

"My wife was not herself. My wife was in an over strained and
suffering condition. For one so nervously overwrought many
allowances must be made. She may have been conscious of not
responding fully to my affection. That this feeling was strong
enough to induce her to take her life is a source of unspeakable
grief to me, but one for which you must find explanation, as I have
so often said, in the terrors caused by the dread event at the
Moore house, which recalled old tragedies and emphasized a most
unhappy family tradition."

The coroner paused a moment to let these words sink into the ears
of the jury, then plunged immediately into what might be called the
offensive part of his examination.

"Why, if your wife's death caused you such intense grief, did you
appear so relieved at receiving this by no means consoling
explanation?"

At an implication so unmistakably suggestive of suspicion Mr.
Jeffrey showed fire for the first time.

"Whose word have you for that? A servant's, so newly come into my
house that her very features are still strange to me. You must
acknowledge that a person of such marked inexperience can hardly be
thought to know me or to interpret rightly the feelings of my heart
by any passing look she may have surprised upon my face."

This attitude of defiance so suddenly assumed had an effect he
little realized. Miss Tuttle stirred for the first time behind her
veil, and Uncle David, from looking bored, became suddenly quite
attentive. These two but mirrored the feelings of the general
crowd, and mine especially.

"We do not depend on her judgment alone," the coroner now remarked.
"The change in you was apparent to many others. This we can prove
to the jury if they require it."

But no man lifting a voice from that gravely attentive body, the
coroner proceeded to inquire if Mr. Jeffrey felt like volunteering
any explanations on this head. Receiving no answer from him either,
he dropped the suggestive line of inquiry and took up the
consideration of facts. The first question he now put was:

"Where did you find the slip of paper containing these last words
from your wife?"

"In a book I picked out of the book-shelf in our room upstairs.
When Loretta gave me my wife's message I knew that I should find
some word from her in the novel we had just been reading. As we had
been interested in but one book since our marriage, there was no
possibility of my making an' mistake as to w