things more incredible to Langholm than the everyday
coincidence of a chance meeting with the one person whom one desires to
meet.

"So that's the man!" he echoed, in a tone that might have told his
companion something, only the fingers which Langholm had feared to crush
had already fallen upon the keys, with the strong, tender, unerring
touch of a master, and the impressionable player was swaying with
enthusiasm on his stool.

"And can't he play?" whispered Valentine Venn, as though it were the
man's playing alone that they were discussing.

Yet even the preoccupied novelist had to listen and nod, and then
listen again, before replying.

"He can," said Langholm at length. "But why was it that they took such
pains to keep his name out of the case?"

"They didn't. It would have done no good to drag him in. The poor devil
was at death's door at the time of the murder."

"But is that a fact?"

Venn opened his eyes.

"Supposing," continued Langholm, speaking the thing that was not in his
mind with the deplorable facility of the professional
story-teller--"supposing that illness had been a sham, and they had
really meant to elope under cover of it!"

"Well, it wasn't."

"I dare say not. But how do you know? They ought to have put him in the
box and had his evidence."

"He was still too ill to be called," rejoined Venn. "But I'll take you
at your word, dear boy, and tell you exactly how I do know all about his
illness. You see that dark chap with the cigar, who's just come in to
listen? That's Severino's doctor; it was he who put him up here; and
I'll introduce you to him, if you like, after dinner."

"Thank you," said Langholm, after some little hesitation; "as a matter
of fact, I should like it very much. Venn," he added, leaning right
across the little table, "I know the woman well! I believe in her
absolutely, on every point, and I mean to make her neighbors and mine do
the same. That is my object--don't give it away!"

"Dear boy, these lips are sealed," said Valentine Venn.

But a very little conversation with the doctor sufficed to satisfy
Langholm's curiosity, and to remove from his mind the wild prepossession
which he had allowed to grow upon it with every hour of that wasted day.
The doctor was also one of the Bohemian colony in Chelsea, and by no
means loath to talk about a tragedy of which he had exceptional
knowledge, since he himself had been one of the medical witnesses at
each successive sta