you last saw her?"

"Nearly three years."

"You were very well acquainted with her, then, or you could not have
glanced up from your table, seen someone staring at you through a
window, and said to yourself, as one may express it:--'That is Adelaide
Melhuish'."

"We were so well acquainted that I asked the lady to be my wife."

"Ah," said the superintendent.

His placid, unemotional features, however, gave no clew to his
opinions. Not so P. C. Robinson, who tried to look like a judge,
whereas he really resembled a bull-terrier who has literally, not
figuratively, smelt a rat.

Despite his earlier good resolutions, Grant was horribly impatient of
this inquisition. He admitted that the superintendent was carrying
through an unpleasant duty as inoffensively as possible, but the attitude
of the village policeman was irritating in the extreme. Nothing would
have tended so effectively to relieve his surcharged feelings as to
supply P. C. Robinson then and there with ample material for establishing
a charge of assault and battery.

"That is not a remarkable fact, if regarded apart from to-day's
tragedy," he said, and there was more than a hint of soul-weariness in
his voice. "Miss Melhuish was a very talented and attractive woman. I
first met her as the outcome of a suggestion that one of my books should
be dramatized, a character in the novel being deemed eminently suitable
for her special role on the stage. The idea came to nothing. She was
appearing in a successful play at the time, and was rehearsing its
successor. Meanwhile, I--fell in love with her, I suppose, and she
certainly encouraged me in the belief that she might accept me. I did
eventually propose marriage. Then she told me she was married already.
It was a painful disillusionment--at the time. I only saw her, to speak
to, once again."

"Did she reveal her husband's name?"

"Yes--a Mr. Ingerman."

The superintendent looked grave. That was a professional trick of his. He
had never before in his life heard of Mr. Ingerman, but encouraged the
notion that this gentleman was thoroughly, and not quite favorably, known
to him. Sometimes it happened that a witness, interpreting this sapient
look by the light of his or her personal and intimate knowledge, would
blurt out certain facts, good or bad as the case might be, concerning the
person under discussion.

But Grant remained obstinately silent as to the qualities of this
doubtful Ingerman, so Mr. Fowler