was in his mind, but he did entertain a suspicion of another
sort: of some possibly guilty secret which might have led to the
tragedy. "I couldn't feel worse if he was my own son," he thought. He
wished desperately that he had gone out in the grove and interrupted
the interview. "I'm old enough to be his father," he told himself,
"and I know what young men are. I'm to blame myself."

When he heard Horace's approaching footsteps on the stair he turned
his face stiffly towards the window, and did not look up when the
young man entered the room. But Horace sat down opposite and began
speaking rapidly in a low voice.

"I don't know but I ought to go to Mr. Meeks with this instead of
you," he said; "and I don't know that I ought to go to anybody, but,
hang it, I can't keep the little I know to myself any longer--that
is, I can't keep the whole of it. Some I never will tell. Mr.
Whitman, I don't know the exact minute Miss Hart gave her that
confounded peppermint, and Miss Hart seems rather misty about it, and
if the girl knows she won't tell; but I suspect I may be the last
person who saw that poor woman alive. I found a note waiting for me
from her when I arrived yesterday, and--well, she wanted to see me
alone about something very particular, and she--" Horace paused and
reddened. "Well, you know what women are, and of course there was
really no place at the hotel where I could have been sure of a
private interview with her. I couldn't go to her room, and one might
as well talk in a trolley-car as that hotel parlor; and she didn't
want to come here to the house and be closeted with me, and she
didn't want to linger after school, for those school-girls are the
very devil when it comes to seeing anything; and though I will admit
it does sound ridiculous and romantic, I don't see myself what else
she could have done. She asked me in her note to step out in the
grove about ten o'clock, when the house was quiet. She wrote she had
something very important to say to me. So I felt like a fool, but I
didn't go to bed, and I stole down the front stairs, and she was out
there in the grove waiting for me, and we sat down on the bench there
and she told me some things."

Henry nodded gravely. He now looked at Horace, and there was relief
in his frowning face.

"I can tell you some of the things that she said to me," continued
Horace, "and I am going to. You are connected with it--that is, you
are through your wife. Miss Farrel wasn