r wrists. For a moment she hung there, drooping,
holding herself up by the strength of her hands upon the table. It was
as if she had been seized with faintness. Then she sprang to where the
cat crouched beside a chair. She dropped upon her knees and tried to
raise it in her arms, but the beast bit and scratched at her feebly, and
crept away to a little distance, where it lay struggling and very
unpleasant to see.

"Poison!" she said, in a choked, gasping whisper. "Poison!" She looked
once toward the man upon the bed, and she was white and shivering. "It's
not true!" she cried again. "I--won't believe it! It's because the
cat--was not used to coffee. Because it was hot. I won't believe it! I
won't believe it!" She began to sob, holding her hands over her white
face.

Ste. Marie watched her with puzzled eyes. If this was acting, it was
very good acting. A little glimmer of hope began to burn in him--hope
that in this last shameful thing, at least, the girl had had no part.

"It's impossible," she insisted, piteously. "I tell you it's impossible.
I brought the coffee myself from the kitchen. I took it from the pot
there--the same pot we had all had ours from. It was never out of my
sight--or, that is--I mean--"

She halted there, and Ste. Marie saw her eyes turn slowly toward the
door, and he saw a crimson flush come up over her cheeks and die away,
leaving her white again. He drew a little breath of relief and gladness,
for he was sure of her now. She had had no part in it.

"It is nothing, Mademoiselle," said he, cheerfully. "Think no more of
it. It is nothing."

"Nothing?" she cried, in a loud voice. "Do you call poison nothing?" She
began to shiver again very violently. "You would have drunk it!" she
said, staring at him in a white agony. "But for a miracle you would have
drunk it--and died!"

Abruptly she came beside the bed and threw herself upon her knees there.
In her excitement and horror she seemed to have forgotten what they two
were to each other. She caught him by the shoulders with her two hands,
and the girl's violent trembling shook them both.

"Will you believe," she cried, "that I had nothing to do with this? Will
you believe me? You must believe me!"

There was no acting in that moment. She was wrung with a frank anguish,
an utter horror, and between her words there were hard and terrible
sobs.

"I believe you, Mademoiselle," said the man, gently. "I believe you.
Pray think no more about it