er day in reference to Gouverneur Hildreth. A woman who
spends a month away from home makes acquaintances which she does not
always mention when she comes back. I saw Mr. Mansell in Buffalo,
and----" turning, she confronted the lawyer with her large gray eyes, in
which a fire burned such as he had never seen there before--"and grew to
esteem him," she went on. "For the first time in my life I found myself
in the presence of a man whose nature commanded mine. His ambition, his
determination, his unconventional and forcible character woke
aspirations within me such as I had never known myself capable of
before. Life, which had stretched out before me with a somewhat
monotonous outlook, changed to a panorama of varied and wonderful
experiences, as I listened to his voice and met the glance of his eye;
and soon, before he knew it, and certainly before I realized it, words
of love passed between us, and the agony of that struggle began which
has ended---- Ah, let me not think how, or I shall go mad!"

Mr. Orcutt, who had watched her with a lover's fascination during all
this attempted explanation, shivered for a moment at this last bitter
cry of love and despair, but spoke up when he did speak, with a coldness
that verged on severity.

"So you loved another man when you came back to my home and listened to
the words of passion which came from _my_ lips, and the hopes of future
bliss and happiness that welled up from _my_ heart?"

"Yes," she whispered, "and, as you will remember, I tried to suppress
those hopes and turn a deaf ear to those words, though I had but little
prospect of marrying a man whose fortunes depended upon the success of
an invention he could persuade no one to believe in."

"Yet you brought yourself to listen to those hopes on the afternoon of
the murder," he suggested, ironically.

"Can you blame me for that?" she cried, "remembering how you pleaded,
and what a revulsion of feeling I was laboring under?"

A smile bitter as the fate which loomed before him, and scornful as the
feelings that secretly agitated his breast, parted Mr. Orcutt's pale
lips for an instant, and he seemed about to give utterance to some
passionate rejoinder, but he subdued himself with a determined effort,
and quietly waiting till his voice was under full control, remarked with
lawyer-like brevity at last:

"You have not told me what evidence you have to give against young
Mansell?"

Her answer came with equal brevity if no