Just how the news of this first reached the papers I have almost forgotten now, but my recollection is that there was another newspaperman and his wife—a small editor or reporter on another paper—who lived in the same vicinity, and that it was to this newspaperman’s wife that Mrs. Steele, after having called her in, confided that she believed she had been poisoned, and by a woman whose name she now gave as Mrs. Marie Davis, and with whom, as she then announced, her husband had long been intimate—the lady of the Steamer _Ira Ramsdell_. She had recognized the handwriting on the package from some letters written to her husband, but only after she had eaten of the candy and felt the pains—not before. Her condition was serious. She was, it appeared, about to die. In this predicament she had added, so it was said, that she had long been neglected by her husband for this other woman, but that she had suffered in silence rather than bring disgrace upon him, herself and their child. Now this cruel blow! Forthwith a thrill of horror and sympathy passed over the city. It seemed too sad. At the same time a cry went up to find the other woman—arrest her, of course—see if she had really done it. There followed the official detention, if not legal arrest, of Mrs. Davis on suspicion of being the poisoner. Although the charge was not yet proved, she was at once thrown into jail, and there held to await the death or recovery of Mrs. Steele, and the proof or disproof of the charge that the candy had been sent by her. And cameras in hand, reporters and artists were packed off to the county jail to hear the accused’s side of the story. As I at once suspected on hearing the news, she proved to be none other than the lady of the _Ira Ramsdell_, and as charming as I had at first assumed her to be. I, being one of those sent to sketch her, was among the first to hear her story. She denied, and very vehemently, that she had sent any poisoned candy to any one. She had never dreamed of any such thing. But she did not deny, which at the time appeared to me to be incriminating, that she had been and was then in love with Steele. In fact, and this point interested me as much then as afterwards, she declared that this was an exceptional passion—her love for him, his love for her—and no mere passing and vulgar intimacy. A high and beautiful thing—a sacred love, the one really true and beautiful thing that had ever come to her—or him—in all their lives. And he would say so, too. For before meeting her, Wallace Steele had been very unhappy—oh, very. And her own marriage had been a failure.