Silence came
over them again. Both men looked moodily at nothing. Finally Henry
spoke.

"One of the worst features of any terrible thing like this is that
burdens innumerable are either heaped upon the shoulders of the
innocent, or they assume them. There's my poor wife actually trying
to make out that she is in some way to blame."

"Women are a queer lot," said Horace, in a miserable tone.

Then the door opened suddenly, and Sylvia's think, excited face
appeared.

"You don't suppose they'll send them to prison?" she said.

"They'll both be acquitted," said Horace. "Don't worry, Mrs. Whitman."

"I've got to worry. How can I help worrying? Even if poor Lucinda is
acquitted, lots of folks will always believe it, and her boarders
will drop away, and as for Hannah Simmons, I shouldn't be a mite
surprised if it broke her match off."

"It's a dreadful thing," said Henry; "but don't you fret too much
over it, Sylvia. Maybe she killed herself, and if they think that
Lucinda won't have any trouble afterwards."

"I think some have that opinion now," said Horace.

Sylvia sniffed. "A woman don't kill herself as long as she's got
spirit enough to fix herself up," she said. "I saw her only yesterday
in a brand-new dress, and her hair was crimped tight enough to last a
week, and her cheeks--"

"Come, Sylvia," said Henry, admonishingly.

"You needn't be afraid. I ain't going to talk about them that's dead
and gone, and especially when they've gone in such a dreadful way;
and maybe it wasn't true," said Sylvia. "But it's just as I say: when
a woman is fixed up the way Miss Eliza Farrel was yesterday, she
ain't within a week of making way with herself. Seems as if I might
have had forethought enough to have got that kitten for poor Lucinda."

Sylvia went out again. The men heard the rattle of dishes. Horace
rose with a heavy sigh, which was almost a sob, and went out by the
hall door, and Henry heard his retreating steps on the stair. He
frowned deeply as he sat by the window. He, too, was bearing in some
measure the burden of which he had spoken. It seemed to him very
strange that under the circumstances Horace had not explained his
mysterious meeting with the woman in the grove north of the house the
night before. Henry had a certainty as to her identity--a certainty
which he could not explain to himself, but which was none the less
fixed.

No suspicion of Horace, as far as the murder was concerned--if murder
it was--