ned. Some of their statements--questioned technically with
success--received unexpected and powerful support, due to the discovery
and production of the prisoner's diary. The entries, guardedly as some
of them were written, revealed her motive for attempting to poison
Philip Dunboyne; proved that she had purposely called on the doctor when
she knew that he would be out, that she had entered the consulting-room,
and examined the medical books, had found (to use her own written words)
"a volume that interested her," and had used the prescription-papers for
the purpose of making notes. The notes themselves were not to be
found; they had doubtless been destroyed. Enough, and more than enough,
remained to make the case for the prosecution complete. The magistrates
committed Helena Gracedieu for trial at the next assizes.

I arrived in the town, as well as I can remember, about a week after the
trial had taken place.

Found guilty, the prisoner had been recommended to mercy by the
jury--partly in consideration of her youth; partly as an expression
of sympathy and respect for her unhappy father. The judge (a father
himself) passed a lenient sentence. She was condemned to imprisonment
for two years. The careful matron of the jail had provided herself with
a bottle of smelling-salts, in the fear that there might be need for
it when Helena heard her sentence pronounced. Not the slightest sign
of agitation appeared in her face or her manner. She lied to the last;
asserting her innocence in a firm voice, and returning from the dock to
the prison without requiring assistance from anybody.

Relating these particulars to me, in a state of ungovernable excitement,
good Miss Jillgall ended with a little confession of her own, which
operated as a relief to my overburdened mind after what I had just
heard.

"I wouldn't own it," she said, "to anybody but a dear friend. One thing,
in the dreadful disgrace that has fallen on us, I am quite at a loss
to account for. Think of Mr. Gracedieu's daughter being one of those
criminal creatures on whom it was once your terrible duty to turn the
key! Why didn't she commit suicide?"

"My dear lady, no thoroughly wicked creature ever yet committed suicide.
Self-destruction, when it is not an act of madness, implies some
acuteness of feeling--sensibility to remorse or to shame, or perhaps a
distorted idea of making atonement. There is no such thing as remorse or
shame, or hope of making atonement, i