Before he could utter another word Arthur was at his side, Frank seizing him by the shoulder with the grip of a giant, demanded, fiercely: 

’What do you mean by her coming last night?  How did she come?  Not by train, for John was there.  Frank, there is something you are keeping back.  I know it by your face.  Tell me the truth.  Is it Gretchen dead in this house?’

‘No,’ Frank answered huskily.  ’It is not Gretchen, if that picture is like her, for this woman is very dark and old, and, besides that, has Gretchen a child?’

For an instant Arthur stood staring at him, or rather at the space beyond him, as if trying to recall something too distant or too shadowy to assume any tangible form; then bursting into a laugh he said: 

’Gretchen a child!  That is the best joke I have heard.  How should Gretchen have a child?  She is little more than one herself, or was when I saw her last.  No, Gretchen has no child.  Why do you ask?’

‘Because,’ Frank replied, ’there was a little girl found in the Tramp House with this woman, a girl three or four years old, I judge.  She is at the cottage now, where Harold carried her.  He found the woman this morning.  Will you see her now?’

Arthur answered ‘no,’ decidedly, and then Frank, who knew that he should never again know peace of mind if his brother did not see her, summoned all his courage and said: 

’Arthur, you must.  I have not told you all.  This woman did come by train from New York.’

‘Then why did not John see her?’ interrupted Arthur.

‘He was not there,’ Frank replied.  ’Forgive me, Arthur, I did not send him as you thought.  It was so cold and stormy, and I had no faith in your presentiments, and so—­so—­’

’And so you lied to me, and I will never trust you again as long as I live, and if this had been Gretchen, I would kill you, where I stand!’ Arthur hissed in a whisper, more terrible to hear than louder tones would have been, ’Yes, I will see this woman whose death lies at your door,’ he continued, with a gesture that Frank should precede him.

Arthur was very calm, and collected, and stern, as he followed to the office where the body lay, covered now from view, but showing terribly distinct through the linen sheet folded over it.

‘Remove the covering,’ he said, in the tone of a master to his slave, and Frank obeyed.

Then bending close to the stiffened form, Arthur examined the face minutely, while Frank looked on alternately between hope and dread, the former of which triumphed as his brother said, quietly: 

’Yes, she is French:  but I do not know her.  I never saw her before.  Had she nothing with her to tell who she was?’

His mood had passed, and Frank did not hear him now.

‘She had a trunk,’ he replied.  ’Here it is, with her clothes, and the child’s, and—­a Bible.’

’He said the last slowly, and, taking up the book, opened it as far as possible from the writing on the margin, which might or might not be dangerous.