on of
hers. At last he thought he had found it. Coming home one day from the
court, he called her into his presence, and, without pause or preamble,
exclaimed, with almost cruel abruptness:

"An event of possible interest to you has just taken place. The murderer
of Mrs. Clemmens has just cut his throat."

He saw before he had finished the first clause that he had struck at the
very citadel of her terrors and her woe. At the end of the second
sentence he knew, beyond all doubt now, what it was she had been
fearing, if not expecting. Yet she said not a word, and by no movement
betrayed that the steel had gone through and through her heart.

A demon--the maddening demon of jealousy--gripped him for the first time
with relentless force.

"Ah, you have been looking for it?" he cried in a choked voice. "You
know this man, then--knew him, perhaps, before the murder of Mrs.
Clemmens; knew him, and--and, perhaps, loved him?"

She did not reply.

He struck his forehead with his hand, as if the moment was perfectly
intolerable to him.

"Answer," he cried. "Did you know Gouverneur Hildreth or not?"

"_Gouverneur Hildreth?_" Oh, the sharp surprise, the wailing anguish of
her tone! Mr. Orcutt stood amazed. "It is not he who has made this
attempt upon his life!--not he!" she shrieked like one appalled.

Perhaps because all other expression or emotion failed him, Mr. Orcutt
broke forth into a loud and harrowing laugh. "And who else should it
be?" he cried. "What other man stands accused of having murdered Widow
Clemmens? You are mad, Imogene; you don't know what you say or what you
do."

"Yes, I am mad," she repeated--"mad!" and leaned her forehead forward on
the back of a high chair beside which she had been standing, and hid her
face and struggled with herself for a moment, while the clock went on
ticking, and the wretched surveyer of her sorrow stood looking at her
bended head like a man who does not know whether it is he or she who is
in the most danger of losing his reason.

At last a word struggled forth from between her clasped hands.

"When did it happen?" she gasped, without lifting her head. "Tell me all
about it. I think I can understand."

The noted lawyer smiled a bitter smile, and spoke for the first time,
without pity and without mercy.

"He has been trying for some days to effect his death. His arrest and
the little prospect there is of his escaping trial seem to have maddened
his gentlemanly brain. F