But from the industry with which he wrote, I began to think he must be composing an elaborate thesis on yellow roses and their habits.

Mr. Porter, looking greatly puzzled, observed to the coroner, “I have listened to your inquiries with interest; and I would like to know what, if any, special importance is attached to this subject of yellow roses.”

“I’m not able to tell you,” replied Mr. Monroe.  “I asked these questions at the instigation of another, who doubtless has some good reason for them, which he will explain in due time.”

Mr. Porter seemed satisfied with this, and I nodded my head at the coroner, as if bidding him to proceed.

But if I had been surprised before at the all but spoken intelligence which passed between the two servants, Elsa and Louis, I was more amazed now.  They shot rapid glances at each other, which were evidently full of meaning to themselves.  Elsa was deathly white, her lips trembled, and she looked at the Frenchman as if in terror of her life.  But though he glanced at her meaningly, now and then, Louis’s anxiety seemed to me to be more for Florence Lloyd than for her maid.

But now the coroner was talking very gravely to Miss Lloyd.

“Do you corroborate,” he was saying, “the statements of your maid about the flowers that were sent you last evening?”

“I do,” she replied.

“From whom did they come?”

“From Mr. Hall.”

“Mr. Hall,” said, the coroner, turning toward the young man, “how could you send flowers to Miss Lloyd last evening if you were in New York City?”

“Easily,” was the cool reply.  “I left Sedgwick on the six o’clock train.  On my way to the station I stopped at a florist’s and ordered some roses sent to Miss Lloyd.  If they did not arrive until she was at dinner, they were not sent immediately, as the florist promised.”

“When did you receive them, Miss Lloyd?”

“They were in my room when I event up there at about ten o’clock last evening,” she replied, and her face showed her wonderment at these explicit questions.

The coroner’s face showed almost as much wonderment, and I said:  “Perhaps, Mr. Monroe, I may ask a few questions right here.”

“Certainly,” he replied.

And thus it was, for the first time in my life, I directly addressed Florence Lloyd.

“When you went up to your room at ten o’clock, the flowers were there?” I asked, and I felt a most uncomfortable pounding at my heart because of the trap I was deliberately laying for her.  But it had to be done, and even as I spoke, I experienced a glad realization, that if she were innocent, my questions could do her no harm.

“Yes,” she repeated, and for the first time favored me with a look of interest.  I doubt if she knew my name or scarcely knew why I was there.

“And you pinned one on your gown?”

“I tucked it in among the laces at my throat, yes.”