irritably. "You knew that before you
came!"

"I think she is very clever too," I remarked.

Barrington Cowles walked on for some time, and then he suddenly turned
on me with the strange question--

"Do you think she is cruel? Do you think she is the sort of girl who
would take a pleasure in inflicting pain?"

"Well, really," I answered, "I have hardly had time to form an opinion."

We then walked on for some time in silence.

"She is an old fool," at length muttered Cowles. "She is mad."

"Who is?" I asked.

"Why, that old woman--that aunt of Kate's--Mrs. Merton, or whatever her
name is."

Then I knew that my poor colourless friend had been speaking to Cowles,
but he never said anything more as to the nature of her communication.

My companion went to bed early that night, and I sat up a long time by
the fire, thinking over all that I had seen and heard. I felt that there
was some mystery about the girl--some dark fatality so strange as to
defy conjecture. I thought of Prescott's interview with her before
their marriage, and the fatal termination of it. I coupled it with poor
drunken Reeves' plaintive cry, "Why did she not tell me sooner?" and
with the other words he had spoken. Then my mind ran over Mrs. Merton's
warning to me, Cowles' reference to her, and even the episode of the
whip and the cringing dog.

The whole effect of my recollections was unpleasant to a degree, and yet
there was no tangible charge which I could bring against the woman. It
would be worse than useless to attempt to warn my friend until I had
definitely made up my mind what I was to warn him against. He would
treat any charge against her with scorn. What could I do? How could I
get at some tangible conclusion as to her character and antecedents? No
one in Edinburgh knew them except as recent acquaintances. She was an
orphan, and as far as I knew she had never disclosed where her former
home had been. Suddenly an idea struck me. Among my father's friends
there was a Colonel Joyce, who had served a long time in India upon the
staff, and who would be likely to know most of the officers who had been
out there since the Mutiny. I sat down at once, and, having trimmed the
lamp, proceeded to write a letter to the Colonel. I told him that I was
very curious to gain some particulars about a certain Captain Northcott,
who had served in the Forty-first Foot, and who had fallen in the
Persian War. I described the man as well as I could from m