hand touched it. When I saw that
hand last it was most assuredly dropping the little burden into the sea.
Lance looked at us most ruefully, so that she laughed and said:

"Come with us, Lance."

She laid her other hand on his arm, and we all three walked into the
dining-room together.

I could not eat any dinner--I could only sit and watch the beautiful
face. It was the face of a good woman--there was nothing cruel, nothing
subtle in it. I must be mistaken. I felt as though I should go mad. She
was a perfect hostess--most attentive--most graceful. I shall never
forget her kindness to me any more than I shall forget the comeliness of
her face or the gleam of her golden hair.

She thought I was not well. She did not know that it was fear which had
blanched my face and made me tremble; she could not tell that it was
horror which curdled my blood. Without any fuss--she was so anxiously
considerate for me--without seeming to make any ceremony, she was so
gracefully kind; she would not let me sit in the draughts; with her own
hands she selected some purple grapes for me. This could never be the
woman who had drowned a little child.

When dinner was over and we were in the drawing-room again, she drew a
chair near the fire for me.

"You will laugh at the notion of a fire in May," she said; "but I find
the early summer evenings chilly, and I cannot bear the cold."

I wondered if she thought of the chill of the water in which she had
plunged the little child. I looked at her; there was not even a fleeting
shadow on her face. Then she lingered for half a minute by my side.

As she drew near to me, I felt again that it was utterly impossible
that my suspicions could be correct, and that I must be mistaken.

"I hope," she said, "you will not think what I am going to say strange.
I know that it is the custom for some wives to be jealous of their
husband's friends--some might be jealous of you. I want to tell you that
I am not one of that kind. I love my husband so utterly, so entirely,
that all whom he loves are dear to me. You are a brother, friend,
everything to him--will you be the same to me?"

A beautiful woman asking, with those sweet, sensitive lips, for my
friendship, looking at me with those calm, tender eyes, asking me to
like her for her husband's sake--the sweetest, the most gracious, the
most graceful picture I had ever seen. Yet, oh, Heaven! a murderess, if
ever there was one! She wondered why I did not resp