Silence.

"You do not speak, Miss Oliver."

Again silence.

"It was Franklin who was with you at the Hotel D----?"

She uttered a cry.

"And it was Franklin who connived at your change of clothing there, and
advised or allowed you to dress yourself in a new suit from Altman's?"

"Oh!" she cried again.

"Then why should it not have been he who accompanied you to the
Chinaman's, and afterwards took you in a second hack to the house in
Gramercy Park?"

"Known, known, all known!" was her moan.

"Sin and crime cannot long remain hidden in this world, Miss Oliver. The
police are acquainted with all your movements from the moment you left
the Hotel D----. That is why I have compassion on you. I wish to save
you from the consequences of a crime you saw committed, but in which you
took no hand."

"O," she exclaimed in one involuntary burst, as she half rose to her
knees, "if you could save me from appearing in the matter at all! If you
would let me run away----"

But Mr. Gryce was not the man to give her hope on any such score.

"Impossible, Miss Oliver. You are the only person who can witness for
the guilty. If _I_ should let you go, the police would not. Then why not
tell at once whose hand drew the hat-pin from your hat and----"

"Stop!" she shrieked; "stop! you kill me! I cannot bear it! If you bring
that moment back to my mind I shall go mad! I feel the horror of it
rising in me now! Be still! I pray you, for God's sake, to be still!"

This was mortal anguish; there was no acting in this. Even he was
startled by the emotion he had raised, and sat for a moment without
speaking. Then the necessity of providing against all further mistakes
by fixing the guilt where it belonged, drove him on again, and he said:

"Like many another woman before you, you are trying to shield a guilty
man at your own expense. But it is useless, Miss Oliver; the truth
always comes to light. Be advised, then, and make a confidant of one who
understands you better than you think."

But she would not listen to this.

"No one understands me. I do not understand myself. I only know that I
shall make a confidant of no one; that I shall never speak." And turning
from him, she buried her head in the bedclothes.

To most men her tone and the action which accompanied it would have been
final. But Mr. Gryce possessed great patience. Waiting for just a moment
till she seemed more composed, he murmured gently:

"Not if you must suffer