spread-out cards, and murder in the smothering pillow.  The vengeance of one who had watched her corroding influence eat the life out of my honour and whose love for our little Roger was such that any deed which ensured his continued presence in the home appeared not only warrantable but obligatory.  Alas!  I knew of but one person in the whole world who could cherish feeling to this extent or possess sufficient will power to carry her lifeless body back to the house and lay it in her bed and give no sign of the abominable act from that day on to this.

“Miss Strange, there are men who have a peculiar conception of duty.  My father—­”

“You need not go on.”  How gently, how tenderly our Violet spoke.  “I understand your trouble—­”

Did she?  She paused to ask herself if this were so, and he, deaf perhaps to her words, caught up his broken sentence and went on: 

“My father was in the hall the day I came staggering in from my visit to the grotto.  No words passed, but our eyes met and from that hour I have seen death in his countenance and he has seen it in mine, like two opponents, each struck to the heart, who stand facing each other with simulated smiles till they fall.  My father will drop first.  He is old—­very old since that day five weeks ago; and to see him die and not be sure—­to see the grave close over a possible innocence, and I left here in ignorance of the blissful fact till my own eyes close forever, is more than I can hold up under; more than any son could.  Cannot you help me then to a positive knowledge?  Think! think!  A woman’s mind is strangely penetrating, and yours, I am told, has an intuitive faculty more to be relied upon than the reasoning of men.  It must suggest some means of confirming my doubts or of definitely ending them.”

Then Violet stirred and looked about at him and finally found voice.

“Tell me something about your father’s ways.  What are his habits?  Does he sleep well or is he wakeful at night?”

“He has poor nights.  I do not know how poor because I am not often with him.  His valet, who has always been in our family, shares his room and acts as his constant nurse.  He can watch over him better than I can; he has no distracting trouble on his mind.”

“And little Roger?  Does your father see much of little Roger?  Does he fondle him and seem happy in his presence?”

“Yes; yes.  I have often wondered at it, but he does.  They are great chums.  It is a pleasure to see them together.”

“And the child clings to him—­shows no fear—­sits on his lap or on the bed and plays as children do play with his beard or with his watch-chain?”

“Yes.  Only once have I seen my little chap shrink, and that was when my father gave him a look of unusual intensity,—­looking for his mother in him perhaps.”

“Mr. Upjohn, forgive me the question; it seems necessary.  Does your father—­or rather did your father before he fell ill—­ever walk in the direction of the grotto or haunt in any way the rocks which surround it?”