I have
discovered one other person in the world who sees it as plainly as I
do. Cruel Mrs. Valeria! why did you torture me? Why didn't you own it
before?"

"What!" I exclaimed, catching the infection of his excitement. "Are
_your_ ideas _my_ ideas? Is it possible that _you_ suspect Mrs. Beauly
too?"

He made this remarkable reply:

"Suspect?" he repeated, contemptuously. "There isn't the shadow of a
doubt about it. Mrs. Beauly poisoned her."

CHAPTER XXX. THE INDICTMENT OF MRS. BEAULY.

I STARTED to my feet, and looked at Miserrimus Dexter. I was too much
agitated to be able to speak to him.

My utmost expectations had not prepared me for the tone of absolute
conviction in which he had spoken. At the best, I had anticipated that
he might, by the barest chance, agree with me in suspecting Mrs. Beauly.
And now his own lips had said it, without hesitation or reserve! "There
isn't the shadow of a doubt: Mrs. Beauly poisoned her."

"Sit down," he said, quietly. "There's nothing to be afraid of. Nobody
can hear us in this room."

I sat down again, and recovered myself a little.

"Have you never told any one else what you have just told me?" was the
first question that I put to him.

"Never. No one else suspected her."

"Not even the lawyers?"

"Not even the lawyers. There is no legal evidence against Mrs. Beauly.
There is nothing but moral certainty."

"Surely you might have found the evidence if you had tried?"

He laughed at the idea.

"Look at me!" he said. "How is a man to hunt up evidence who is tied to
this chair? Besides, there were other difficulties in my way. I am not
generally in the habit of needlessly betraying myself--I am a cautious
man, though you may not have noticed it. But my immeasurable hatred of
Mrs. Beauly was not to be concealed. If eyes can tell secrets, she must
have discovered, in my eyes, that I hungered and thirsted to see her in
the hangman's hands. From first to last, I tell you, Mrs. Borgia-Beauly
was on her guard against me. Can I describe her cunning? All my
resources of language are not equal to the task. Take the degrees of
comparison to give you a faint idea of it: I am positively cunning; the
devil is comparatively cunning; Mrs. Beauly is superlatively cunning.
No! no! If she is ever discovered, at this distance of time, it will not
be done by a man--it will be done by a woman: a woman whom she doesn't
suspect; a woman who can watch her with the patience of a tigr