he
life-insurance company, in which Mr. Hammond had but lately insured
himself for a large sum, taking advantage of the suicide clause embodied
in the policy, announced its determination of not paying the same.

Such was the situation, as known to Violet Strange and the general
public, on the day she was asked to see Mrs. Hammond and learn what
might alter her opinion as to the justice of this verdict and the stand
taken by the Shuler Life Insurance Company.

The clock on the mantel in Miss Strange's rose-coloured boudoir had
struck three, and Violet was gazing in some impatience at the door, when
there came a gentle knock upon it, and the maid (one of the elderly, not
youthful, kind) ushered in her expected visitor.

"You are Mrs. Hammond?" she asked, in natural awe of the too black
figure outlined so sharply against the deep pink of the sea-shell room.

The answer was a slow lifting of the veil which shadowed the features
she knew only from the cuts she had seen in newspapers.

"You are--Miss Strange?" stammered her visitor; "the young lady who--"

"I am," chimed in a voice as ringing as it was sweet. "I am the person
you have come here to see. And this is my home. But that does not make
me less interested in the unhappy, or less desirous of serving them.
Certainly you have met with the two greatest losses which can come to a
woman--I know your story well enough to say that--; but what have you
to tell me in proof that you should not lose your anticipated income as
well? Something vital, I hope, else I cannot help you; something which
you should have told the coroner's jury--and did not."

The flush which was the sole answer these words called forth did not
take from the refinement of the young widow's expression, but rather
added to it; Violet watched it in its ebb and flow and, seriously
affected by it (why, she did not know, for Mrs. Hammond had made no
other appeal either by look or gesture), pushed forward a chair and
begged her visitor to be seated.

"We can converse in perfect safety here," she said. "When you feel quite
equal to it, let me hear what you have to communicate. It will never go
any further. I could not do the work I do if I felt it necessary to have
a confidant."

"But you are so young and so--so--"

"So inexperienced you would say and so evidently a member of what New
Yorkers call 'society.' Do not let that trouble you. My inexperience is
not likely to last long and my social pleasures