competent trained nurse--had
escaped from the attic sick-room, and had got the revolver. Garth saw
that Nora, too, could fancy Taylor's panic and self-reproach as he lay
sick and helpless in bed, knowing his wife was free, foreseeing
inevitably much the sort of thing that had happened, trying when it was
too late to confess his mistake, to warn the authorities that his wife
was at large and, possibly, dangerous.

"But she didn't give him time to write enough," Garth said. "She
followed too quickly her ruling impulse to punish the man she blamed for
her tragic situation. Moreover, the realization of what she had done, as
is common in such cases, returned her to approximate sanity, suggested,
even without her mother's prompting, Taylor's California blind as a road
from her dreadful dilemma. And McDonald's daughter, through her fright
and a promise of money, could be persuaded to avoid arousing her father
or Clara, to throw on one of Mrs. Taylor's dresses, to hurry with her to
Albany. Evidently the girl lost her nerve, for she was to have come back
as if nothing had happened. She was to have taken care of Mrs. Taylor.
Eventually she was to have placed her in a sanitarium, explaining her
breakdown, as well as any present peculiarities, naturally enough
through the shock of her husband's suicide. It was McDonald's demands to
know what had happened to his daughter that made Mrs. Taylor turn on him
finally. If he had been able to speak then I think he would have broken
faith with his dead master and told us the truth about her condition."

"Is there any hope for her?" Nora asked.

"I've asked the doctor," Garth answered. "He says that the studied
manner in which she threw us off the track when we caught her crying
over McDonald, and her failure to lose complete control of herself when
she was arrested indicate that her trouble is curable. It seems to have
been brought on by her intolerable life in this gloomy house with an
invalid whom she didn't love, while her affection for Reed increased
hopelessly. Her illness was broken by such periods of apparent sanity as
she had last night and to-day. I rather think Reed and she may be happy
yet."

Nora smiled wistfully.

"Then," she said slowly, "I almost wish we had kept Taylor's secret
better than he did himself."

CHAPTER XIX

PAYMENT IS DEMANDED FOR THE GRAY MASK

The approach of the moment when she must testify against Slim and
George; must tell in public the de