_.

"Considerable consternation was caused this morning in the Castle of
Rittersheim and its neighbourhood upon the fact becoming known that His
Serene Highness the Duke had passed away during the night. It appears
that the Duke has been in bad health ever since his return from England
two months ago, where he had the misfortune to break his arm; he
suffered also the loss of a very dear friend, in Mr. Summers, an
American gentleman who, for some time, had been acting as his
secretary, and whose body, it will be remembered, was found under very
mysterious circumstances, at the time the Duke left England, in a
tunnel on the Great Western Railway, just after the Bath express had
passed through, in which train it is known Mr. Summers had been
travelling with an elderly gentleman. A rumour concerning the
connection of Mr. Summers with a murder which had taken place in the
Bath train seems to have preyed on the Duke's mind, and he has been
unable to sleep for some weeks past.

"It is presumed that for this reason he had commenced the habit of
injecting morphia, as a large hypodermic syringe, with an empty morphia
bottle, were found beside his dead body. The general opinion is, that
he succumbed to an overdose."

"Well, what do _you_ think," asked St. Nivel, as I laid down the paper,
"accident or suicide?"

"It is impossible to say," I replied. "Nobody can tell, and I should
think that will be one of the problems which will go down to posterity
unsolved."

"As unsolved, I suppose," he answered, "as the mystery of your old lady
of Bath?"

That was a subject I had barred since my pledge to Don Juan. "Who can
tell?" I answered with a shrug of the shoulders, "I have given it up.
I never think of it."

"_I_ do, though," replied my cousin, "and I also recollect, very often
with mingled feelings, the way in which the finding of that man
Summers' body in the tunnel was hushed up, and no further efforts made
to connect him with the murder of poor Brooks."

"I don't see that any good purpose would have been served," I answered,
"if they _had_ connected him with it. He could not have been tried and
hanged."

"No, certainly not, but there would have been the satisfaction in
_knowing_. But I believe your deceased friend the Duke of Rittersheim
worked that. In my opinion he threw a cloak of some sort over the Bath
case too, and I don't suppose you will ever discover the truth of it."

"No," I answered solemnly, "I do