d much as I admired and revered
Miss Althorpe, I could not bring myself to meet or even talk of the man
to whom she was in expectation of being so soon united. There was
another thing of which I was ignorant, and that was the circumstances
which had invested with so much interest the crime of which I had been
witness. I did not know that the victim had been recognized, or that an
innocent man had been arrested for her murder. In fact I knew nothing
concerning the affair save what I had seen with my own eyes, no one
having mentioned the murder in my presence, and I having religiously
avoided the very sight of a paper for fear that I should see some
account of the horrible affair, and so lose what small remnants of
courage I still possessed.

"This apathy concerning a matter so important to myself, or rather this
almost frenzied determination to cut myself loose from my dreadful past,
may seem strange and unnatural; but it will seem stranger yet when I say
that for all these efforts I was haunted night and day by one small fact
connected with this past, which made forgetfulness impossible. I had
taken the rings from the hands of the dead woman as I had taken away her
clothes, and the possession of these valuables, probably because they
represented so much money, weighed on my conscience and made me feel
like a thief. The purse which I found in a pocket of the skirt I had put
on was a trouble to me, but the rings were a source of constant terror
and disturbance. I hid them finally in a ball of yarn I was using, but
even then I experienced but little peace, for they were not mine, and I
lacked the courage to avow it or seek out the person to whom they now
rightfully belonged.

"When, therefore, in the intervals of fever which attacked me in Miss
Althorpe's house, I overheard enough of a conversation between her and
Miss Butterworth to learn that the murdered woman had been a Mrs. Van
Burnam, and that her husband or relatives had an office somewhere
downtown, I was so seized by the instinct of restitution, that I took
the first opportunity that offered to leave my bed and hunt up these
people.

"That I would injure them in any way by secretly restoring these jewels,
I never dreamed. Indeed, I did not exercise my mind at all on the
subject, but only followed the instincts of my delirium; and while to
all appearance I showed all the cunning of an insane person, in the
pursuit of my purpose, I fail to remember now how I foun