ever, he smiled involuntarily; the girl was so very pretty and so
very unlike anything which he had ever seen. "Dressed up as if she
were going to a ball, in a dress made like a night-gown," he thought,
but he smiled. As for Horace, he felt dazzled. He had scarcely
realized how pretty Rose was under the dark-blue mist of her veil. He
placed a chair for her, and began talking about the journey and the
weather while Sylvia got supper. Henry was reading the local paper.
Rose's eyes kept wandering to that. Suddenly she sprang to her feet,
was across the room in a white swirl, and snatched the paper from
Henry's hands.

"What is this, oh, what is this?" she cried out.

She had read before Horace could stop her. She turned upon him, then
upon Henry. Her face was very pale and working with emotion.

"Oh," she cried, "you only telegraphed me that poor Cousin Eliza was
dead! You did not either of you tell me she was murdered. I loved
her, although I had not seen her for years, because I have so few to
whom my love seemed to belong. I was sorry because she was dead, but
murdered!"

Rose threw herself on a chair, and sobbed and sobbed.

"I loved her; I did love her," she kept repeating, like a distressed
child. "I did love her, poor Cousin Eliza, and she was murdered. I
did love her."

Chapter IX

Horace was right in his assumption that the case against Lucinda Hart
and Hannah Simmons would never be pressed. Although it was proved
beyond a doubt that Eliza Farrel had swallowed arsenic in a
sufficiently large quantity to cause death, the utter absence of
motive was in the favor of the accused, and then the suspicion that
the poison might have been self-administered, if not with suicidal
intent, with another, steadily gained ground. Many thought Miss
Farrel's wonderful complexion might easily have been induced by the
use of arsenic.

At all events, the evidence against Lucinda and Hannah, when sifted,
was so exceedingly flimsy, and the lack of motive grew so evident,
that there was no further question of bringing them to trial. Still
the suspicion, once raised, grew like a weed, as suspicion does grow
in the ready soil of the human heart. For a month after the tragedy
it seemed as if Sylvia Whitman's prophecy concerning the falling off
of the hotel guests was destined to fail. The old hostelry was
crowded. Newspaper men and women from all parts of the country
flocked there, and also many not connected with the press