in my presence, which, if I had dared, I should have been
glad to think meant a growing interest in our friendship.

"You have heard all?" I asked, knowing from her manner that she had.

"Yes," she replied; "Mr. Hall was here for dinner, and then--then he
went away to--"

"To prison," I finished quietly. "Florence, I cannot think he is the
murderer of your uncle."

If she noticed this, my first use of her Christian name, she offered no
remonstrance, and I went on,

"To be sure, they have proved that he had motive, means, opportunity,
and all that, but it is only indefinite evidence. If he would but tell
where he was on Tuesday night, he could so easily free himself. Why will
he not tell?"

"I don't know," she said, looking thoughtful. "But I cannot think he was
here, either. When he said good-by to me to-night, he did not seem at
all apprehensive. He only said he was arrested wrongfully, and that
he would soon be set free again. You know his way of taking everything
casually."

"Yes, I do. And now that you are your uncle's heiress, I suppose he no
longer wishes to break the engagement between you and him."

I said this bitterly, for I loathed the nature that could thus turn
about in accordance with the wheel of fortune.

To my surprise, she too spoke bitterly.

"Yes," she said; "he insists now that we are engaged, and that he never
really wanted to break it. He has shown me positively that it is my
money that attracts him, and if it were not that I don't want to seem to
desert him now, when he is in trouble--"

She paused, and my heart beat rapidly. Could it be that at last she saw
Gregory Hall as he really was, and that his mercenary spirit had killed
her love for him? At least, she had intimated this, and, forcing myself
to be content with that for the present, I said:

"Would you, then, if you could, get him out of this trouble?"

"Gladly. I do not think he killed Uncle Joseph, but I'm sure I do not
know who did. Do you?"

"I haven't the least idea," I answered honestly, for there, in Florence
Lloyd's presence, gazing into the depths of her clear eyes, my last,
faint suspicion of her wrong-doing faded away. "And it is this total
lack of suspicion that makes the case so simple, and therefore so
difficult. A more complicated case offers some points on which to build
a theory. I do not blame Mr. Goodrich for suspecting Mr. Hall, for there
seems to be no one else to suspect."

Just then Mr. Lemuel Port