"I found the door unlocked."

"That was done by Mrs. Jeffrey?"

"Yes, but I did not think of her then."

"And you went in?"

"Yes; it was all dark, but I felt my way till I came to the gilded
pillars."

"Why did you go there?"

"Because I felt--I knew--if he were anywhere in that house he
would be there!"

"And why did you stop?"

Her voice rose above its usual quiet pitch in shrill protest:

"You know! you know! I heard a pistol-shot from within, then a
fall. I don't remember anything else. They say I went wandering
about town. Perhaps I did; it is all a blank to me--everything is
a blank till the policeman said that my sister was dead and I
learned for the first time that the shot I had heard in the Moore
house was not the signal of his death, but hers. Had I been myself
when at that library door," she added, after a moment of silence,
"I would have rushed in at the sound of that shot and have received
my sister's dying breath."

"Cora!" The cry was from Mr. Jeffrey, and seemed to be quite
involuntary. "In the weeks during which we have been kept from
speaking together I have turned all these events over in my mind
till I longed for any respite, even that of the grave. But in all
my thinking I never attributed this motive to your visit here.
Will you forgive me?"

There was a new tone in his voice, a tone which no woman could
hear without emotion.

"You had other things to think of," she said, and her lips trembled.
Never have I seen on the human face a more beautiful expression than
I saw on hers at that moment; nor do I think Mr. Jeffrey had either,
for as he marked it his own regard softened almost to tenderness.

The major had no time for sentimentalities. Turning to Mr. Jeffrey,
he said:

"One more question before we send for the letter which you say will
give us full insight into your wife's crime. Do you remember what
occurred on the bridge at Georgetown just before you came into town
that night?"

He shook his head.

"Did you meet any one there?"

"I do not know."

"Can you remember your state of mind?"

"I was facing the future."

"And what did you see in the future?"

"Death. Death for her and death for me! A crime was on her soul
and she must die, and if she, then myself. I knew no other course.
I could not summon the police, point out my bride of a fortnight
and, with the declaration that she had been betrayed into killing a
man, coldly deliver her up to jus