he knew, as well as I, that Carmel had been in the
building with her sister, and was involved more or less personally in the
crime committed there. Might it not be simply as his accessory after the
fact? If only I could believe this! If my knowledge of him and of her
would allow me to hug this forlorn hope, and behold, in this shock to her
brain, and in her look and attitude on leaving the club-house, only a
sister's horror at a wilful brother's crime!

But one fact stood in the way of this--a fact which nothing but some
predetermined, underhanded purpose on her part could explain. She had
gone in disguise to The Whispering Pines, and she had returned home in
the same suspicious fashion. The wearing of her brother's hat and coat
over her own womanly garments was no freak. There had been purpose in
it--a purpose which demanded secrecy. That Adelaide should have
accompanied her under these circumstances was a mystery. But then the
whole affair was a mystery, totally out of keeping, in all its details,
with the characters of these women, save--and what a fearful exception I
here make--the awful end, which, alas! bespoke the fiery rush and impulse
to destroy which marked Carmel's unbridled rages.

Of a less emotional attack she would be as incapable as any other good
woman. Poison she would never use. Its presence there was due to
another's forethought, another's determination. But the poison had not
killed. Both glasses had been emptied, but--Ah! those glasses. What
explanation had the police, now, for those two emptied glasses? They had
hitherto supposed me to be the second person who had joined Adelaide in
this totally uncharacteristic drinking.

To whom did they now attribute this act? To Arthur, the brother whose
love for liquor in every form she had always decried, and had publicly
rebuked only a few hours before? Knowing nothing of Carmel having been on
the scene, they must ascribe this act either to him or to me; and when
they came to dwell upon this point more particularly--when they came to
study the exact character of the relations which had always subsisted
between Adelaide and her brother--they must see the improbability of her
drinking with him under any circumstances. Then their thoughts would
recur to me, and I should find myself again a suspect. The monstrous
suggestion that Arthur had brought the liquor there himself, had poured
it out and forced her to drink it, poison and all, out of revenge for her
a