the
veil from his hitherto well disguised antagonism to this witness.

"If you will recount to us anything which your wife said or did on
that evening which, in your mind, was worthy of all this coil, it
might help us to understand the situation."

But the witness made no attempt to do so, and while many of us were
ready to pardon him this show of delicacy, others felt that under
the circumstances it would have been better had he been more open.

Among the latter was the coroner himself, who, from this moment,
threw aside all hesitation and urged forward his inquiries in a way
to press the witness closer and closer toward the net he was secretly
holding out for him. First, he obliged him to say that his
conversation with Miss Tuttle had not tended to smooth matters; that
no reconciliation with his wife had followed it, and that in the
thirty-six hours which elapsed before he returned home again he had
made no attempt to soothe the feelings of one, who, according to his
own story, he considered hardly responsible for any extravagances
in which she might have indulged. Then when this inconsistency had
been given time to sink into the minds of the jury, Coroner Z.
increased the effect produced by confronting Jeffrey with witnesses
who testified to the friendly, if not lover-like relations which had
existed between himself and Miss Tuttle prior to the appearance of
his wife upon the scene; closing with a question which brought out
the denial, by no means new, that an engagement had ever taken place
between him and Miss Tuttle and hence that a bond had been canceled
by his marriage with Miss Moore.

But his manner and careful choice of words in making this denial
did not satisfy those present of his entire candor; especially as
Miss Tuttle, for all her apparent immobility, showed, by the violent
locking of her hands, both her anxiety and the suffering she was
undergoing during this painful examination. Was the suffering merely
one of outraged delicacy? We felt justified in doubting it, and
looked forward, with cruel curiosity I admit, to the moment when
this renowned and universally admired beauty would be called on to
throw aside her veil axed reveal the highly praised features which
had been so openly scorned for the sake of one whose chief claims
to regard lay in her great wealth.

But this moment was as yet far distant. The coroner was a man of
method, and his plan was now to prove, as had been apparent to mo