living woman.

His first glance at her face convinced him she had taken her resolution.
His second, that in taking it she had drifted into a state of feeling
different from any he had observed in her before, and of a sort that to
him was wholly inexplicable. Her words when she spoke only deepened this
impression.

[Illustration: "The curtains parted and disclosed the form of Imogene.
'I am coming,' she murmured, and stepped forth."--(Page 402.)]

"Mr. Ferris," said she, coming very near to him in evident dread of
being overheard, "I have decided to tell you all. I hoped never to be
obliged to do this. I thought enough had been revealed to answer your
purpose. I--I believed Heaven would spare me this last trial, let me
keep this last secret. It was of so strange a nature, so totally out of
the reach of any man's surmise. But the finger of God is on me. It has
followed this crime from the beginning, and there is no escape. By some
strange means, some instinct of penetration, perhaps, you have
discovered that I know something concerning this murder of which I have
never told you, and that the hour I spent at Professor Darling's is
accountable for this knowledge. Sir, I cannot struggle with Providence.
I will tell you all I have hitherto hidden from the world if you will
promise to let me know if my words will prove fatal, and if he--he who
is on trial for his life--will be lost if I give to the court my last
evidence against him?"

"But, Miss Dare," remonstrated the District Attorney, "no man can
tell----" He did not finish his sentence. Something in the feverish gaze
she fixed upon him stopped him. He felt that he could not palter with a
woman in the grasp of an agony like this. So, starting again, he
observed: "Let me hear what you have to say, and afterward we will
consider what the effect of it may be; though a question of expediency
should not come into your consideration, Miss Dare, in telling such
truths as the law demands."

"No?" she broke out, giving way for one instant to a low and terrible
laugh which curdled Mr. Ferris' blood and made him wish his duty had
led him into the midst of any other scene than this.

But before he could remonstrate with her, this harrowing expression of
misery had ceased, and she was saying in quiet and suppressed tones:

"The reason I did not see and respond to the girl who came into the
observatory on the morning of Mrs. Clemmens' murder is, that I was so
absorbed in the dis