n minutes I should be due upon the stage.

The girl was very lovely. Yes, lovely was the right word for her--lovely
and lovable. She was like a fresh rose, with the morning dew of youth on
its petals--a rose that had budded and was beginning to bloom in a fair
garden, far out of reach of ugly weeds. I envied her, for I felt how
different her sweet, girl's life had been from my stormy if sometimes
brilliant career.

"Mr. Dundas sent you to me?" I asked. "When did you see him? Surely
not--since--"

"This afternoon," she answered quietly, in a pretty, un-English sounding
voice, with a soft little drawl of the South in it. "I went to see him.
They gave us five minutes. A warder was there; but speaking quickly in
Spanish, just a few words, he--Mr. Dundas--managed to tell me a thing he
wished me to do. He said it meant more than his life, so I did it; for
we have been friends, and just now he's helpless. The warder was angry,
and stopped our conversation at once, though the five minutes weren't
ended. But I understood. Mr. Dundas said there wasn't a moment to lose."

"Yet that was in the afternoon, and you only come to me at this hour!" I
exclaimed.

"I had something else to do first," she said, in the same quiet voice.
She was looking down now, not at me, and her eyelashes were so long that
they made a shadow on her cheeks. But the blood streamed over her face.

"Even before I saw--Mr. Dundas," she went on, "I had the idea of calling
on you--about a different matter. I think it would be more honest of me,
if before I go on I tell you that--quite by accident, so far as I was
concerned--I was with someone who saw Mr. Dundas go to your house last
night, a little after twelve. I didn't dream of spying on--either of
you. It just happened, it wouldn't interest you to know how. Yet--I beg
of you to tell me one thing. Was he with you for long--so long that he
couldn't have got to the other place in time to commit the murder?"

"He was in my house until after one," I said boldly. "But you, if you
are his friend, ought to know him well enough to be certain without such
an assurance from me, that he is no murderer."

"Oh, I am certain," she protested. "I asked the question, not for that
reason, but to know if you could really prove his innocence, if you
choose. Now, I find you can. When I read the papers this afternoon, at
first I wanted to rush off to the police and tell them where he had been
while the murder was being commit