n of law, to keep
him in countenance.

When the lawyer came, he and Plausaby were closeted for half an hour.
Then Plausaby, Esq., took a walk, and the attorney requested an interview
with Isabel. She came in, stiff, cold, and self-possessed.

"Miss Marlay," said the lawyer, smiling a little as became a man asking a
favor from a lady, and yet looking out at Isa in a penetrating way from
beneath shadowing eyebrows, "will you have the goodness to tell me the
nature of the paper that Mrs. Plausaby signed yesterday?"

"Did Mrs. Plausaby sign a paper yesterday?" asked Isabel diplomatically.

"I have information to that effect. Will you tell me whether that paper
was of the nature of a will or deed or--in short, what was its
character?"

"I will not tell you anything about it. It is Mrs. Plausaby's secret. I
suppose you get your information from Mrs. Ferret. If she chooses to tell
you the contents, she may."

"You are a little sharp, Miss Marlay. I understand that Mrs. Ferret does
not know the contents of that paper. As the confidential legal adviser of
Mr. Plausaby and of Mrs. Plausaby, I have a right to ask what the
contents of that paper were."

"As the confidential legal adviser--" Isa stopped and stammered. She
was about to retort that as confidential legal adviser to Mrs. Plausaby
he might ask that lady herself, but she was afraid of his doing that very
thing; so she stopped short and, because she was confused, grew a little
angry, and told Mr. Conger that he had no right to ask any questions, and
then got up and disdainfully walked out of the room. And the lawyer, left
alone, meditated that women had a way, when they were likely to be
defeated, of getting angry, or pretending to get angry. And you never
could do anything with a woman when she was angry. Or, as Conger framed
it in his mind, a mad dog was easier to handle than a mad woman.

As the paper signed the day before could not have been legally executed,
Plausaby and his lawyer guessed very readily that it probably did not
relate to property. The next step was an easy one to the client if not to
the lawyer. It must relate to the crime--it was a solution of the
mystery. Plausaby knew well enough that a confession had been made to
Lurton, but he had not suspected that Isabel would go so far as to put it
into writing. The best that could be done was to have Conger frame a
counter-declaration that her confession had been signed under a
misapprehension--had be