He put this damaging missive in his pocket along with the anonymous letter, and presently went up to his wife’s room to await her return to the home which, he had resolved, should no longer shelter a woman who had deceived him so grossly. He guessed at once the writer of this warning note—it could be none other than Alma Buckley, the friend of her youth. The reference to her having brought up the man known as Archie Brookes proved that beyond the possibility of doubt. How long it seemed before the minutes passed and the door opened to admit the familiar figure! Preoccupied with her own thoughts, Mrs. Morrice hardly looked at her husband as she advanced to give him the perfunctory kiss which is one of the courtesies of a placid and unemotional married life. But when he drew back with a gesture of something like repugnance from the proffered caress, she noted for the first time the terrible expression on his face, and was overcome with a deadly fear. “What is the matter? Why are you looking like that?” she gasped in a trembling voice. Consumed inwardly with fury as Morrice was, he exercised great control over himself. He knew that he would put himself at a disadvantage if he stormed and raged; he must overwhelm this wretched woman with the pitiless logic of the facts he had accumulated. He must act the part of the pitiless judge rather than that of the impassioned advocate. He advanced to the door and turned the key, then came back to her and pointed to a chair. There was a cold and studied deliberation about his movements that filled her guilty soul with a fearful terror. “Sit there while I speak to you,” he said in a harsh and grating voice. “You have much to account to me for. Read that.” He drew the anonymous letter from his pocket and flung it in her lap. Like one dazed, she drew it from the envelope with trembling fingers, and very slowly, for her thoughts were in terrible confusion, mastered its accusing contents. Then she looked up at him with a face from which all the colour had fled, leaving it ghastly to look at. “It is a lie,” she stammered in a voice scarcely above a whisper. “It is the truth,” he thundered, “and you are as shameless in the hour of your detection as you have been in your career of fraud and deceit.” “Prove it,” she cried faintly, still feebly trying to oppose his gathering anger. “You have lived with me a good many years,” he said witheringly, “and yet you know so little of me as to think I should speak like that if I were not sure I was on firm ground. And yet perhaps you have some excuse. I have been a blind fool so long that you were justified in your hopes I should continue blind to the end. Well, that letter opened my eyes. Your fortunate absence gave me facilities that it might have been difficult to create. I have taken several of the most valuable articles in your collection and had them examined. Need I tell you the result? Your guilty face shows plainly enough that you need no telling.”