ad
been a kindly-spoken gentleman; in fact he had complimented her on
the clear, sensible way she had given her evidence concerning the
exact words the unhappy girl had used.

One thing Ellen Green had said, in answer to a question put by
an inquisitive juryman, had raised a laugh in the crowded,
low-ceilinged room. "Ought not Miss Ellen Green," so the man had
asked, "to have told someone of the girl's threat? If she had done
so, might not the girl have been prevented from throwing herself
into the lake?" And she, the witness, had answered, with some
asperity--for by that time the coroner's kind manner had put her
at her ease--that she had not attached any importance to what the
girl had threatened to do, never believing that any young woman
could be so silly as to drown herself for love!

******

Vaguely Mrs. Bunting supposed that the inquest at which she was
going to be present this afternoon would be like that country
inquest of long ago.

It had been no mere perfunctory inquiry; she remembered very well
how little by little that pleasant-spoken gentleman, the coroner,
had got the whole truth out--the story, that is, of how that
horrid footman, whom she, Ellen Green, had disliked from the first
minute she had set eyes on him, had taken up with another young
woman. It had been supposed that this fact would not be elicited
by the coroner; but it had been, quietly, remorselessly; more, the
dead girl's letters had been read out--piteous, queerly expressed
letters, full of wild love and bitter, threatening jealousy. And
the jury had censured the young man most severely; she remembered
the look on his face when the people, shrinking back, had made a
passage for him to slink out of the crowded room.

Come to think of it now, it was strange she had never told Bunting
that long-ago tale. It had occurred years before she knew him, and
somehow nothing had ever happened to make her tell him about it.

She wondered whether Bunting had ever been to an inquest. She longed
to ask him. But if she asked him now, this minute, he might guess
where she was thinking of going.

And then, while still moving about her bedroom, she shook her head
--no, no, Bunting would never guess such a thing; he would never,
never suspect her of telling him a lie.

Stop--had she told a lie? She did mean to go to the doctor after
the inquest was finished--if there was time, that is. She wondered
uneasily how long such an inquiry was likely to la