, who have lived with
her--or so I have been told-ever since her marriage with Mr. Jeffrey?"

"Yes."

Keen and clear the word rang out, fierce in its keenness and almost
too clear to be in keeping with the half choked tones with which she
added: "I know that she was not happy, that she never has been happy
since the shadow which this room suggests fell upon her marriage.
But how could I so much as dream that her dread of the past or her
fear of the future would drive her to suicide, and in this place of
all places! Had I done so--had I imagined in the least degree that
she was affected to this extent--do you think that I would have
left her for one instant alone? None of us knew that she contemplated
death. She had no appearance of it; she laughed when I--"

What had she been about to say? The captain seemed to wonder, and
after waiting in vain for the completion of her sentence, he quietly
suggested:

"You have not finished what you had to say, Miss Tuttle."

She started and seemed to come back from some remote region of
thought into which she had wandered. "I don't know--I forget," she
stammered, with a heart-broken sigh. "Poor Veronica! Wretched
Veronica! How shall I ever tell him! How, how, can we ever prepare
him!"

The captain took advantage of this reference to Mr. Jeffrey to ask
where that gentleman was. The young lady did not seem eager to
reply, but when pressed, answered, though somewhat mechanically,
that it was impossible for her to say; Mr. Jeffrey had many friends
with any one of whom he might be enjoying a social evening.

"But it is far past midnight now," remarked the captain. "Is he in
the habit of remaining out late?"

"Sometimes," she faintly admitted. "Two or three times since his
marriage he has been out till one."

Were there other causes for the young bride's evident disappointment
and misery besides the one intimated? There certainly was some
excuse for thinking so.

Possibly some one of as may have shown his doubts in this regard,
for the woman before us suddenly broke forth with this vehement
assertion:

"Mr. Jeffrey was a loving husband to my sister. A very loving
husband," she emphasized. Then, growing desperately pale, she added,
"I have never known a better man," and stopped.

Some hidden anguish in this cry, some self-consciousness in this
pause, suggested to me a possibility which I was glad to see ignored
by the captain in his next question.

"When did