are more apt to add to
my efficiency than to detract from it."

With this Violet's face broke into a smile. It was not the brilliant
one so often seen upon her lips, but there was something in its quality
which carried encouragement to the widow and led her to say with obvious
eagerness:

"You know the facts?"

"I have read all the papers."

"I was not believed on the stand."

"It was your manner--"

"I could not help my manner. I was keeping something back, and, being
unused to deceit, I could not act quite naturally."

"Why did you keep something back? When you saw the unfavourable
impression made by your reticence, why did you not speak up and frankly
tell your story?"

"Because I was ashamed. Because I thought it would hurt me more to speak
than to keep silent. I do not think so now; but I did then--and so
made my great mistake. You must remember not only the awful shock of my
double loss, but the sense of guilt accompanying it; for my husband and
I had quarreled that night, quarreled bitterly--that was why I had run
away into another room and not because I was feeling ill and impatient
of the baby's fretful cries."

"So people have thought." In saying this, Miss Strange was perhaps
cruelly emphatic. "You wish to explain that quarrel? You think it will
be doing any good to your cause to go into that matter with me now?"

"I cannot say; but I must first clear my conscience and then try to
convince you that quarrel or no quarrel, he never took his own life. He
was not that kind. He had an abnormal fear of death. I do not like to
say it but he was a physical coward. I have seen him turn pale at the
least hint of danger. He could no more have turned that muzzle upon his
own breast than he could have turned it upon his baby. Some other hand
shot him, Miss Strange. Remember the open window, the shattered mirror;
and I think I know that hand."

Her head had fallen forward on her breast. The emotion she showed was
not so eloquent of grief as of deep personal shame.

"You think you know the man?" In saying this, Violet's voice sunk to a
whisper. It was an accusation of murder she had just heard.

"To my great distress, yes. When Mr. Hammond and I were married," the
widow now proceeded in a more determined tone, "there was another man--a
very violent one--who vowed even at the church door that George and I
should never live out two full years together. We have not. Our second
anniversary would have been in N