mstances that led you to the
bed-side of Rosa Blondelle, at the moment in which her murderer had left
her, but I heard it at second hand. I would now hear it from yourself,"
said Mr. Sheridan.

Sybil began and related the whole story, which the lawyer took down from
her lips.

"Now," he said, "Mr. Berners, I would have your statement, commencing
from the moment the deceased rushed into the library."

Lyon Berners related the circumstances attending Rosa Blondelle's death,
as far as he knew them.

"And now I would like to minutely examine the room in which the crime
was committed," said Mr. Sheridan.

"Come, then," answered Lyon Berners. And he led the lawyer to the rooms
lately occupied by Rosa Blondelle.

"A man might easily have escaped by these windows an instant after
having committed the crime. They close with a spring catch. The fact of
their having been found fastened when the room was examined, proves
nothing whatever against my client. The murderer could in an instant
unfasten one of them from within, jump through, and clap it to behind
him, when it would be as fast as if secured by a careful servant
within," said the lawyer, after the examination was complete.

Then they all returned to the library, where Mr. Sheridan summed up his
brief for the defence.

"Give yourself no uneasiness, Mrs. Berners," he said. "Your case lies in
a nut-shell. It is based upon your own explanation of your attitude at
the bed-side of the victim, and upon the fact, which I shall undertake
to prove, that the assassin had escaped from the window at the foot of
the bed."

The lawyer spoke so cheerfully that Sybil's spirits rose again.

He then, as a precautionary measure, he said, to give them the help of
the greatest bulwarks of the bar, advised that they should write to
Washington to engage the services of the celebrated Ishmael Worth, who,
in a case like this, would apply in the regular way to be admitted to
plead.

Mr. Berners accepted this advice, and said that he would lose no time in
following it.

Then the lawyer took his leave.

He had scarcely got out of sight before Captain Pendleton and his sister
Beatrix drove up to the door.

"I have come to stay with you as long as you will let me, my darling,"
said Beatrix, as Sybil hastened to welcome her.

"Then you will stay with me forever, or until you are happily married,
dearest," answered Sybil, hospitably, as she led her friend up to a
bedroom to lay off he