strange name.

Supposing he received me, sympathized with me, understood me? What would
he say? The nurse, in her evidence, had reported him as speaking in an
off-hand manner. He would say, in all probability, "What do you mean to
do? And how can I help you to do it?"

Had I answers ready if those two plain questions were put to me? Yes! if
I dared own to any human creature what was at that very moment secretly
fermenting in my mind. Yes! if I could confide to a stranger a suspicion
roused in me by the Trial which I have been thus far afraid to mention
even in these pages!

It must, nevertheless, be mentioned now. My suspicion led to results
which are part of my story and part of my life.

Let me own, then, to begin with, that I closed the record of the Trial
actually agreeing in one important particular with the opinion of my
enemy and my husband's enemy--the Lord Advocate! He had characterized
the explanation of Mrs. Eustace Macallan's death offered by the defense
as a "clumsy subterfuge, in which no reasonable being could discern the
smallest fragment of probability." Without going quite so far as this,
I, too, could see no reason whatever in the evidence for assuming
that the poor woman had taken an overdose of the poison by mistake. I
believed that she had the arsenic secretly in her possession, and that
she had tried, or intended to try, the use of it internally, for the
purpose of improving her complexion. But further than this I could
not advance. The more I thought of it, the more plainly justified the
lawyers for the prosecution seemed to me to be in declaring that Mrs.
Eustace Macallan had died by the hand of a poisoner--although they were
entirely and certainly mistaken in charging my husband with the crime.

My husband being innocent, somebody else, on my own showing, must be
guilty. Who among the persons inhabiting the house at the time had
poisoned Mrs. Eustace Macallan? My suspicion in answering that question
pointed straight to a woman. And the name of that woman was--Mrs.
Beauly!

Yes! To that startling conclusion I had arrived. It was, to my mind, the
inevitable result of reading the evidence.

Look back for a moment to the letter produced in court, signed "Helena,"
and addressed to Mr. Macallan. No reasonable person can doubt (though
the Judges excused her from answering the question) that Mrs. Beauly
was the writer. Very well. The letter offers, as I think, trustworthy
evidence to show the s