st, I'm
sure we all feel we would have borne a good deal sooner than let this
dreadful thing happen."

"Dr. Anstice"--Chloe turned to him almost appealingly--"are we really to
blame? If we hadn't plotted, set a trap to catch my poor Tochatti, this
would not have come to pass; and I shall always feel that by leaving the
dagger in my dressing-case I was the means of bringing this dreadful
tragedy about."

"Come, Mrs. Carstairs, you mustn't talk nonsense of that kind!" His tone
was bracing. "You were not in the least to blame. If anyone was, I
should be the person, seeing I did not warn you of this possibility. But
you know the poor soul was a very determined woman; and if she had set
her mind on self-destruction she would have carried out her intention
somehow."

"Well, at least there will be no object in keeping the authorship of
those confounded letters a secret now," said Major Carstairs, putting
his hand kindly on his wife's arm. "After all poor Tochatti has done us
a service by her death which will go far towards wiping out the injury
of her life. And now it is one o'clock, and we none of us had much sleep
last night----"

"You're right," said Anstice quickly, "and Mrs. Carstairs looks worn
out. Can't you persuade her to go to bed, Major Carstairs? There is
really no need for her to stay here harrowing her feelings another
moment."

"I'll go," she said at once. "Good-night again, Dr. Anstice. It will
comfort me to know that you don't think me entirely to blame--for this."

"I think you are as innocent in this matter as in that other one we
discussed to-night," he said quietly. "And this poor woman here, if, as
we may surely believe, she has regained by now the sanity she may have
temporarily lost, would be the last to think any but kindly thoughts of
you in the light of her fuller humanity."

"Thank you," she said again, as she had said it earlier in the evening;
and once more they exchanged the firm and cordial handshake by which
those who are truly friends seal their parting.

When he had closed the door behind her he came back to the bedside where
Major Carstairs still stood, looking down on the dead woman with an
unfathomable expression in his eyes.

"Anstice, from the bottom of my heart I regret the manner of this poor
soul's passing," he said, and his voice was genuinely moved. "But even
so I can't altogether regret that she took this way of cutting the knot.
For now my wife and I may at least hope