me. Indeed, I supposed
it was an advertisement, and I only wonder that I retained it in my hand
at all. But that I did do so, and that, in a moment of abstraction I
went so far as to pin it to my cushion, is evident from the fact that a
vague memory remains in my mind of having read this recipe which you see
printed on the reverse side of the paper."

"It was the recipe, then, and not the obituary notice which attracted
your attention the night before?"

"Probably, but in pinning it to the cushion, it was the obituary notice
that chanced to come uppermost. Oh, why should I not have remembered
this till now! Can you understand my forgetting a matter of so much
importance?"

"Yes," I allowed, after a momentary consideration of her ingenuous
countenance. "The words you read in the morning were so startling that
they disconnected themselves from those you had carelessly glanced at
the night before."

"That is it," she replied; "and since then I have had eyes for the one
side only. How could I think of the other? But who could have printed
this thing and who was the man who put it into my hand? He looked like a
beggar but--Oh!" she suddenly exclaimed, her cheeks flushing scarlet and
her eyes flashing with a feverish, almost alarming, glitter.

"What is it now?" I asked. "Another recollection?"

"Yes." She spoke so low I could hardly hear her. "He coughed and----"

"And what?" I encouragingly suggested, seeing that she was under some
new and overwhelming emotion.

"That cough had a familiar sound, now that I think of it. It was like
that of a friend who--But no, no; I will not wrong him by any false
surmises. He would stoop to much, but not to that; yet----"

The flush on her cheeks had died away, but the two vivid spots which
remained showed the depth of her excitement.

"Do you think," she suddenly asked, "that a man out of revenge might
plan to frighten me by a false notice of my husband's death, and that
God to punish him, made the notice a prophecy?"

"I think a man influenced by the spirit of revenge might do almost
anything," I answered, purposely ignoring the latter part of her
question.

"But I always considered him a good man. At least I never looked upon
him as a wicked one. Every other beggar we meet has a cough; and yet,"
she added after a moment's pause, "if it was not he who gave me this
mortal shock, who was it? He is the only person in the world I ever
wronged."

"Had you not better tell me