eaf."
Then, with sharp directness, he asked her: "Who do you think killed your
sister?"

"I don't know! Oh, I don't know!" she cried shrilly, more than ever
suggestive of the spoiled child.

"It must have been some burglar. She was very popular, everybody said.
She had no enemies."

"None at all?"

"None that I know of."

"But Mr. Morley didn't like her, did he?"

"No," she said slowly. "He didn't like her, but you couldn't have called
him her enemy."

Bristow moved his chair toward her several inches.

"Miss Fulton," he asked, "you and Mr. Morley are engaged to be married,
aren't you?"

"No!" she surprised him. "No; we're not!"

He did not tell her that Morley had said they were.

Greenleaf was now clearly conscious of what he had vaguely felt while
listening to Bristow's questioning of Withers: the lame man had the
faculty of seeming entirely inoffensive in his queries but at the same
time putting into his voice an irritating, challenging quality which was
bound to work on the feelings of the person to whom he talked. He had
begun to have this effect on Miss Fulton.

"I understood," he informed her, "that you were--er--quite fond of each
other."

"Not at all! Not at all!" she denied with increasing vehemence. "I'm not
engaged to him now. Nothing could induce me to marry him!"

"Mr. Morley declared this morning that you and he were to be married."

She caught herself up quickly, anger evident in her eyes, and at the same
time, also, a look of caution. Bristow decided she wanted to tell
nothing, to give him no advantage, no actual insight into the clouded
situation.

"I see what you mean," she said. "We were engaged, but I finally decided
that our marriage was impossible--because of this--my illness."

"And you told him so?"

She thought a long moment before she answered:

"Yes."

"When?"

"Yesterday."

"Then, when did you give him--let him have Mrs. Withers' ring?"

She showed signs of weakening.

"Yesterday," she declared. "No! Last night, I've already told you."

"And why did he want the ring last night when you had broken with him
earlier yesterday?"

His subtle irritation of her by his manner and tone had unstrung her at
last.

"I don't know," she cried, hysterics in her voice. "Oh, I don't know! Why
do you ask me all these foolish little questions?" She tore unconsciously
at the counterpane, her fingers writhing against one another. "Please,
please don't bother me any more! L