lashed for a moment into the eyes she turned like lightning upon
him.

"Gouverneur Hildreth!" she repeated. And he knew from the tone that it
was not only a different name from what she anticipated, but that it was
also a strange one to her. "I never heard of such a person," she went on
after a minute, during which the relentless mellow voice of the
unconscious singer filled the room with the passionate appeal:

"Oh, what was love made for, if 't is not the same,
Through joy and through sorrow, through glory and shame!"

"That is not strange," explained Mr. Byrd, drawing nearer, as if to
escape that pursuing sweetness of incongruous song. "He is not known in
this town. He only came here the morning the unfortunate woman was
murdered. Whether he really killed her or not," he proceeded, with
forced quietness, "no one can tell, of course. But the facts are very
much against him, and the poor fellow is under arrest."

"What?"

The word was involuntary. So was the tone of horrified surprise in which
it was uttered. But the music, now swelling to a crescendo, drowned both
word and tone, or so she seemed to fondly imagine; for, making another
effort at self-control, she confined herself to a quiet repetition of
his words, "'Under arrest'?" and then waited with only a suitable
display of emotion for whatever further enlightenment he chose to give
her.

He mercifully spoke to the point.

"Yes, under arrest. You see he was in the house at or near the time the
deadly blow was struck. He was in the front hall, he says, and nowhere
near the woman or her unknown assailant, but there is no evidence
against any one else, and the facts so far proved, show he had an
interest in her death, and so he has to pay the penalty of
circumstances. And he may be guilty, who knows," the young detective
pursued, seeing she was struck with horror and dismay, "dreadful as it
is to imagine that a gentleman of culture and breeding could be brought
to commit such a deed."

But she seemed to have ears for but one phrase of all this.

"He was in the front hall," she repeated. "How did he get there? What
called him there?"

"He had been visiting the widow, and was on his way out. He paused to
collect his thoughts, he said. It seems unaccountable, Miss Dare; but
the whole thing is strange and very mysterious."

She was deaf to his explanations.

"Do you suppose he heard the widow scream?" she asked, tremblingly,
"or----"