“As, for instance?”

“That Mrs. Taylor is no stranger to you, even if Mademoiselle Duclos was.  We have evidence you will find it hard to dispute that you knew and—­liked each other, fifteen years or so ago.”

“Evidence?”

“Incontrovertible, Mr. Roberts.”

“Attested to by her?  I do not believe it.  I never shall believe it, and I deny the charge.  The ravings of a sick woman,—­if it is such you have listened to——­”

“I advise you to stop there, Mr. Roberts,” interjected the District Attorney.  “Mrs. Taylor has said nothing.  Neither has Madame Duclos.  What the former may say under oath I do not know.  We shall both have an opportunity to hear to-morrow, when Coroner Price opens his inquest.  She is in sufficiently good health now, I believe, to give her testimony.  Pray, say nothing.”  Mr. Roberts had started to his feet.  “Do nothing.  You will be one of the witnesses called——­”

There he stopped, meeting with steady gaze the wild eyes of the man who was staring at him, staring at them all in an effort to hold them back, while his finger crept stealthily and ever more stealthily toward his right-hand vest-pocket.

“You would dare,” he shouted, then suddenly dropped his hand and broke into a low, inarticulate murmur, harrowing and dreadful to hear.  To some it sounded like a presage to absolute confession, but presently this murmur took on a distinctness, and they heard him say: 

“I should be glad to have five minutes’ talk with Mrs. Taylor before that time.  In your presence, gentlemen, or in anybody’s presence, I do not care whose.”

Did he know—­had he felt whose step was in the hall, whose form was at the door?  If he did, then the agitation which in another moment shook his self-possession into ashes was that of hope realized, not of fear surprised.  Ermentrude Taylor entered the room and at the sight of her he rose and his arms went out; then he sank back weak and stricken into his chair, gazing as if he could never have his fill at her noble countenance luminous with a boundless pity if not with the tenderness of an unforgotten love.

When she was near enough to speak without effort and had thanked the gentlemen who had made way for her with every evidence of respect, she addressed him in quite a natural tone but with strange depths of feeling in her voice: 

“What is it you want to say to me?  As I stood at the door, I heard you tell these gentlemen that you would like to have a few minutes’ talk with me.  I was glad to hear that; and I am ready to listen to—­anything.”

The pause she made before uttering the last word caused it to ring with double force when it fell.  All heads drooped at the sound and the lines came out on Mr. Gryce’s face till he looked his eighty-five years and more.  But what Carleton Roberts had to say at this critical moment of his double life was not at all what they expected to hear.