rs. To their great relief, he betrayed no curiosity in
them. All he wanted was a berth in the first train going south, and this
was an easy way for them out of a great responsibility. They listened
to his wishes and saw him safely aboard, with such alacrity and with
so many precautions against his being disturbed that they have never
doubted that he left El Moro in total ignorance, not only of the
circumstances of his great bereavement, but of the bereavement itself.

This ignorance, which he appeared to have carried with him to the
Placide, was regarded by those who knew him best as proving the truth of
the affirmation elicited from him in the pauses of his delirium of the
genuineness of the stone which had passed from his hands to those of his
wife at the time of their separation; and, further despatches coming in,
some private and some official, but all insisting upon the fact that it
would be weeks before he would be in a condition to submit to any sort
of examination on a subject so painful, the authorities in New York
decided to wait no longer for his testimony, but to proceed at once with
the inquest.

Great as is the temptation to give a detailed account of proceedings
which were of such moment to myself, and to every word of which I
listened with the eagerness of a novice and the anguish of a woman
who sees her lover's reputation at the mercy of a verdict which may
stigmatize him as a possible criminal, I see no reason for encumbering
my narrative with what, for the most part, would be a mere repetition of
facts already known to you.

Mr. Durand's intimate and suggestive connection with this crime, the
explanations he had to give of this connection, frequently bizarre and,
I must acknowledge, not always convincing,--nothing could alter these
nor change the fact of the undoubted cowardice he displayed in hiding
Mrs. Fairbrother's gloves in my unfortunate little bag.

As for the mystery of the warning, it remained as much of a mystery as
ever. Nor did any better success follow an attempt to fix the ownership
of the stiletto, though a half-day was exhausted in an endeavor to show
that the latter might have come into Mr. Durand's possession in some of
the many visits he was shown to have made of late to various curio-shops
in and out of New York City.*

I had expected all this, just as I had expected Mr. Grey to be absent
from the proceedings and his testimony ignored. But this expectation did
not make the ord