keep the
servants and the horses waiting much longer in this bleak place."

I was too deeply interested in leading Miserrimus Dexter to pursue
the subject on which he had touched to be willing to leave him at that
moment. I pretended not to have heard Mrs. Macallan. I laid my hand, as
if by accident, on the wheel-chair to keep him near me.

"You showed me how highly you esteemed that poor lady in your evidence
at the Trial," I said. "I believe, Mr. Dexter, you have ideas of your
own about the mystery of her death?"

He had been looking at my hand, resting on the arm of his chair, until I
ventured on my question. At that he suddenly raised his eyes, and fixed
them with a frowning and furtive suspicion on my face.

"How do you know I have ideas of my own?" he asked, sternly.

"I know it from reading the Trial," I answered. "The lawyer who
cross-examined you spoke almost in the very words which I have just
used. I had no intention of offending you, Mr. Dexter."

His face cleared as rapidly as it had clouded. He smiled, and laid
his hand on mine. His touch struck me cold. I felt every nerve in me
shivering under it; I drew my hand away quickly.

"I beg your pardon," he said, "if I have misunderstood you. I _have_
ideas of my own about that unhappy lady." He paused and looked at me in
silence very earnestly. "Have _you_ any ideas?" he asked. "Ideas about
her life? or about her death?"

I was deeply interested; I was burning to hear more. It might encourage
him to speak if I were candid with him. I answered, "Yes."

"Ideas which you have mentioned to any one?" he went on.

"To no living creature," I replied--"as yet."

"This very strange!" he said, still earnestly reading my face. "What
interest can _you_ have in a dead woman whom you never knew? Why did you
ask me that question just now? Have you any motive in coming here to see
me?"

I boldly acknowledged the truth. I said, "I have a motive."

"Is it connected with Eustace Macallan's first wife?"

"It is."

"With anything that happened in her lifetime?"

"No."

"With her death?"

"Yes."

He suddenly clasped his hands with a wild gesture of despair, and then
pressed them both on his head, as if he were struck by some sudden pain.

"I can't hear it to-night!" he said. "I would give worlds to hear it,
but I daren't. I should lose all hold over myself in the state I am in
now. I am not equal to raking up the horror and the mystery of the past;
I have