“No; but he will, or I’ll sue him and get judgment.  Oh, he’ll pay all right.  He’ll be so tickled to get out of paying his wife a monthly sum that he’ll settle with me.  But I can’t understand her attitude any more than I can the change that came over him.  For I really think he loved Cynthia once.  She was a beautiful girl, and is still a handsome woman, though trouble has left its mark on her.  Well, it’s a queer world anyhow!”

“Isn’t it?” agreed the colonel.  “And it takes all sorts of persons to make it up.  I’m sorry I can’t offer any explanation as to why your client wouldn’t accept money when she had a perfect right to it.  However, as you won your case I suppose it doesn’t so much matter.”

“Not a great deal.  Still I would like to know.  There will be a sensation when this comes out.”

And there was, when Daley, of the Times, scooped the other reporters and sprang his sensational story of the separation of the Larchs, the case having been heard in camera by the vice chancellor.

The murder of Mrs. Darcy had, some time ago, been shifted off the front page, though it would get back there when the young jeweler was tried.  As for the killing of Shere Ali, that occasioned only passing interest, the murdered man not being well known.

But the separation of Mr. and Mrs. Larch was different.  The finely appointed hotel kept by Larch, called the “Homestead,” from the name of an old inn of Colonial days which it replaced, was known for miles around.  It had a double reputation, so to speak.  Though it had a grill, in which, nightly, there gathered such of the “sports” of Colchester as cared for that form of entertainment, the Homestead also catered to gatherings of a more refined nature.  Grave, and even reverend, conventions assembled in its ballroom, and politicians of the upper, if not better, class were frequently seen in its dining-room or cafe.  Being convenient to the courthouse, nearly all the judges and lawyers took lunch there.  The place was also the scene of more or less important political dinners of the state, at which matters in no slight degree affecting national policies were often whipped into shape.

Larch himself was a peculiar character.  In a smaller place he would have been called a saloon keeper.  Going a little higher up the scale in population he might have been designated as a hotel proprietor.  But in Colchester, which was rather unique among cities, he was looked up to as one of the substantial citizens of the place, for he owned the Homestead, where Washington, when it was a wayside inn, had stopped one night—­at least such was the rumor—­and families socially prominent, some of whose members had very strong views on prohibition, did not hesitate to attend balls given at the hotel.

And it was this man, rich, it was said, handsome certainly, that Cynthia Ratchford had married.  There had been other lovers whom she might have wedded, it was rumored, and more than one had remarked: