I produced it from my box, trembling inwardly all over.

Jane darted one finger demonstratively at a point in the photograph.

“Whose hand is that?” she asked with a strange earnestness, putting her nail on the murderer’s.

The words escaped me in a cry of horror almost before I was aware of them: 

“Aunt Emma’s!” I said, gasping.  “I never noticed it before.”

Then I drew back and stared at it in speechless awe and consternation.

It was quite, quite true.  No use in denying it.  The figure that escaped through the window was dressed in man’s clothes, to be sure, and as far as one could judge from the foreshortening and the peculiar stoop, had a man’s form and stature.  But the hand was a woman’s—­soft, and white, and delicate:  nay more, the hand, as I said in my haste, was line for line Aunt Emma’s.

In a moment a terrible sinking came over me from head to foot.  I trembled like an aspen-leaf.  Could this, then, be the meaning of Dr. Marten’s warning, that I should let sleeping dogs lie, lest I should be compelled to punish someone whom I loved most dearly?  Had Fate been so cruel to me, that I had learned to cling most in my Second State to the very criminal whose act had blotted out my First?  Had I grown to treat like a mother my father’s murderer?

Aunt Emma’s hand!  Aunt Emma’s hand!  That was Aunt Emma’s hand, every touch and every line of it.  But no! where were the marks, those well-known marks on the palm?  I took up the big magnifying-glass with which I had often scanned that photograph close before.  Not a sign or a trace of them.  I shut my eyes, and called up again the mental Picture of the murder.  I looked hard at the phantom-hand in it, that floated like a vision, all distinct before my mind’s eye.  It was flat and smooth and white.  Not a scar—­not a sign on it.  I turned round to Jane, that too natural detective.

“No, no!” I cried hastily, with a quick tone of triumph.  “Aunt Emma’s hand is marked on the palm with great gashes and cuts.  This one’s smooth as smooth can be.  And so’s the one I can see in the Picture within me!”

Jane drew back with a startled air, and opened her mouth, all agog, to let in a deep breath.

“The wall!” she said slowly.  “The bottle-glass, don’t you know!  The blood on the top!  Whoever did it, climbed over and tore his hands.  Or her hands, if it was a woman!  That would account for the gashes.”

This was more than I could endure.  The coincidence was too crushing.  I bent down my head on my arms and cried silently, bitterly.  I hated Jane in my heart for even suggesting it.  Yet I couldn’t deny to myself for a moment the strength and suggestiveness of her half-spoken argument.

Not that for a second I believed it true.  I could never believe it.  Aunt Emma, so gentle, so kindly, so sweet:  incapable of hurting any living thing:  the tenderest old lady that breathed upon earth:  and my own mother’s sister, whom I loved as I never before loved anyone!  Aunt Emma the murderess!  The bare idea was preposterous!  I couldn’t entertain it.  My whole nature revolted from it.