could happen to you. Don't
you see where the hypothesis to which you persist in clinging would land
you? Should the woman in there prove to be your wife Georgian--" The
lawyer stopped and, in a tone the seriousness of which could not fail to
impress his agitated hearer, added quietly, "you remember what I said to
you a short time ago about _guilt_."

"Guilt!"

"No, the word was shame. But guilt better expresses my meaning. I repeat,
should the woman prove to be, not the lovely but ignorant girl she
appears, but Georgian Ransom, your wife, then upon her must fall the
onus of Anitra's disappearance if not of her possible death. No! you must
hear me out; the time has come for plain speaking. Your wife had her
reasons--we do not know what they were, but they were no common ones--for
wishing this intrusive sister out of the way. Anitra, on the contrary,
could have desired nothing so much as the preservation of her protector.
The conclusion is not an agreeable one. Let us hope that the question it
involves will never be presented for any man's consideration."

Mr. Ransom sank speechless into a chair. This last blow was an
overwhelming one and he sank before it.

Mr. Harper altered his tone. He had real commiseration for his client and
had provided himself with an antidote to the poison he had just so
ruthlessly administered.

"Courage!" he cried. "I only wished you to see that there were worse
losses to consider than that of your wife's desertion, even if that
desertion took the form of suicide. There is a reason which you have
forgotten for acquitting Mrs. Ransom of such criminal intentions and
of accepting as your sister-in-law the woman who calls herself Anitra.
Recall Mrs. Ransom's will; the general terms of which I felt myself
justified in confiding to you. In it there are no provisions made for
this Anitra. Had Mrs. Ransom, for any inexplicable reason, planned an
exchange of identities with her sorely afflicted sister, she would have
been careful to have left that sister some portion of her great fortune.
But she did not remember her with a cent. This fact is very significant
and should give you great comfort."

"It should, it should, in face of the other alternative you have
suggested as possible. But I fear that I am past comfort. In whatever
light we regard this tragedy, it all means woe and disaster to me. I have
made a mess of my life and I have got to face the fact like a man." Then
rising and confronting