a thrill which poorly prepared me for the cry which I now heard
raised by Hibbard.

"Look here! What do you make of this?"

He was pointing to what, upon closer inspection, proved to be a
strip of white satin ribbon running from one of the delicate wrists
of the girl before us to the handle of a pistol which had fallen
not far away from her side. "It looks as if the pistol was attached
to her. That is something new in my experience. What do you think
it means?"

Alas! there was but one thing it could mean. The shot to which she
had succumbed had been delivered by herself. This fair and delicate
creature was a suicide.

But suicide in this place! How could we account for that? Had the
story of this room's ill-acquired fame acted hypnotically on her, or
had she stumbled upon the open door in front and been glad of any
refuge where her misery might find a solitary termination? Closely
scanning her upturned face, I sought an answer to this question, and
while thus seeking received a fresh shock which I did not hesitate
to communicate to my now none-too-sensitive companion.

"Look at these features," I cried. "I seem to know them, do you?"

He growled out a dissent, but stooped at my bidding and gave the
pitiful young face a pro longed stare. When he looked up again it
was with a puzzled contraction of his eyebrows.

"I've certainly seen it somewhere," he hesitatingly admitted, edging
slowly away toward the door. "Perhaps in the papers. Isn't she
like--?"

"Like!" I interrupted, "it is Veronica Moore herself; the owner of
this house and she who was married here two weeks since to Mr. Jeffrey.
Evidently her reason was unseated by the tragedy which threw so deep
a gloom over her wedding."

III

I REMAIN

Not for an instant did I doubt the correctness of this identification.
All the pictures I had seen of this well-known society belle had
been marked by an individuality of expression which fixed her face
in the memory and which I now saw repeated in the lifeless features
before me.

Greatly startled by the discovery, but quite convinced that this was
but the dreadful sequel of an already sufficiently dark tragedy, I
proceeded to take such steps as are common in these cases. Having
sent the too-willing Hibbard to notify headquarters, I was on the
point of making a memorandum of such details as seemed important,
when my lantern suddenly went out, leaving me in total darkness.

This was fa