attended only by
Bagshot, that useful woman possessing, in addition to her other
qualifications, both skill and experience as a nurse.

They started; but the journey was soon ended. On the 11th of June the
world of New York was startled, its upper circles hotly excited, and one
obscure young teacher in a little suburban home paralyzed, by the great
headings in the morning newspapers. Mrs. Heathcote, wife of Captain Ward
Heathcote,---- New York Volunteers, while on her way homeward with her
husband, who was wounded in the Shenandoah Valley, had been found
murdered in her room in the country inn at Timloesville, where they were
passing the night. And the evidence pointed so strongly toward Captain
Heathcote that he had been arrested upon suspicion.

The city journals appended to this brief dispatch whatever details they
knew regarding the personal history of the suspected man and his victim.
Helen's beauty, the high position of both in society, and their large
circle of friends were spoken of; and in one account the wife's wealth,
left by will unconditionally to her husband, was significantly
mentioned. One of the larger journals, with the terrible and pitiless
impartiality of the great city dailies, added that if there had been a
plan, some part of it had signally failed. "A man of the ability of
Captain Heathcote would never have been caught otherwise in a web of
circumstantial evidence so close that it convinced even the pastoral
minds of the Timloesville officials. We do not wish, of course, to
prejudge this case; but from the half-accounts which have reached us, it
looks as though this blunder, whatever it may have been, was but another
proof of the eternal verity of the old saying, Murder will out."

It was the journal containing this sentence which Anne read. She had
heard the news of Heathcote's safety a few hours after her visit to
Helen. Only a few days had passed, and now her eyes were staring at the
horrible words that Helen was dead, and that her murderer was her own
husband.

CHAPTER XXXI.

"All her bright hair streaming down,
And all the coverlid was cloth of gold
Drawn to her waist, and she herself in white
All but her face, and that clear-featured face
Was lovely, for she did not seem as dead,
But fast asleep, and lay as though she smiled."

--TENNYSON.

EXTRACT FROM THE NEW YORK "MARS."

"The following details in relation to the terrible crime with whos