attached to
it, the most experienced among us were baffled as to the nature of
his feelings and thoughts. One thing alone was patent to all. He
had no wish to touch this woman whom he had so lately sworn to
cherish. His eyes devoured her, he shuddered and strove several
times to speak, and though kneeling by her side, he did not reach
forth his hand nor did he let a tear fall on the appealing features
so pathetically turned upward as if to meet his look.

Suddenly he leaped to his feet.

"Must she stay here?" he demanded, looking about for the person most
in authority.

The captain answered by a question:

"How do you account for her being here at all? What explanation
have you, as her husband, to give for this strange suicide of your
wife?"

For reply, Mr. Jeffrey, who was an exceptionally handsome man, drew
forth a small slip of crumpled paper, which he immediately handed
over to the speaker.

"Let her own words explain," said he. "I found this scrap of
writing in our upstairs room when I returned home to-night. She
must have written it just before--before--"

A smothered groan filled up the break, but it did not come from his
lips, which were fixed and set, but from those of the woman who
crouched amongst us. Did he catch this expression of sorrow from
one whose presence he as yet had given no token of recognizing? He
did not seem to. His eye was on the captain, who was slowly reading,
by the light of a lantern held in a detective's hand, the almost
illegible words which Mr. Jeffrey had just said were his wife's last
communication.

Will they seem as pathetic to the eye as they did to the ear in that
room of awesome memories and present death?

"I find that I do not love you as I thought I did. I can not live,
knowing this to be so. I pray God that you may forgive me.

VERONICA"

A gasp from the figure in the corner; then silence. We were glad to
hear the captain's voice again.

"A woman's heart is a great mystery," he remarked, with a short
glance at Mr. Jeffrey.

It was a sentiment we could all echo; for he, to whom she had alluded
in these few lines as one she could not love, was a man whom most
women would consider the embodiment of all that was admirable and
attractive.

That one woman so regarded him was apparent to all. If ever the
heart spoke in a human face, it spoke in that of Miss Tuttle as she
watched her sister's husband struggling for composure above the
prostrate f