ing her
hated rival in company with her husband, under the very roof where she
had hoped to lay the foundations of her future happiness, must have been
great, if not maddening. Accusations, recriminations even, did not
satisfy her. She wanted to kill; but she had no weapon. Suddenly her
eyes fell on the hat-pin which her more self-possessed rival had drawn
from her hat, possibly before their encounter, and she conceived a plan
which seemed to promise her the very revenge she sought. How she carried
it out; by what means she was enabled to approach her victim and inflict
with such certainty the fatal stab which laid her enemy at her feet, can
be left to the imagination. But that she, a woman, and not Howard, a
man, drove this woman's weapon into the stranger's spine, I will yet
prove, or lose all faith in my own intuitions.

But if this theory is true, how about the shelves that fell at daybreak,
and how about her escape from the house without detection? A little
thought will explain all that. The man, horrified, no doubt, at the
result of his imprudence, and execrating the crime to which it had led,
left the house almost immediately. But the woman remained there,
possibly because she had fainted, possibly because he would have nothing
to do with her; and coming to herself, saw her victim's face staring up
at her with an accusing beauty she found it impossible to meet. What
should she do to escape it? Where should she go? She hated it so she
could have trampled on it, but she restrained her passions till
daybreak, when in one wild burst of fury and hatred she drew down the
cabinet upon it, and then fled the scene of horror she had herself
caused. This was at five, or, to be exact, three minutes before that
hour, as shown by the clock she had carelessly set in her lighter
moments.

She escaped by the front door, which her husband had mercifully forborne
to lock; and she had not been discovered by the police, because her
appearance did not tally with the description which had been given them.
How did I know this? Remember the discoveries I had made in Miss Van
Burnam's room, and allow them to assist you in understanding my
conclusions.

Some one had gone into that room; some one who wanted pins; and keeping
this fact before my eyes, I saw through the motive and actions of the
escaping woman. She had on a dress separated at the waist, and finding,
perhaps, a spot of blood on the skirt, she conceived the plan of
covering