"Cinnamon! what a corroboration--what a horrible corroboration! Cleek, you knock the last prop from under me; you make certain a thing that I thought was only a woman's wild imaginings," said Narkom, getting up suddenly, all a-tremble with excitement. "Good heavens! to have Miss Valmond's story corroborated in this dreadful way." "Miss Valmond? Who's she? Any relation to that Miss Rose Valmond whose name one sees in the papers so frequently in connection with gifts to Catholic Orphanages and Foundling Homes?" "The same lady," replied Narkom. "Her charities are numberless, her life a psalm. I think she has done more good in her simple, undemonstrative way than half the guilds and missions in London. She has an independent fortune, and lives, in company with an invalid and almost imbecile mother, and a brother who is, I am told, studying for the priesthood, in a beautiful home surrounded by splendid grounds, the walls of which separate her garden from that of Lemmingham House." "Ah, I see. Then she is a neighbour of Barrington-Edwards?" "Yes. From the back windows of her residence one can look into the grounds of his. That is how--Cleek!" Mr. Narkom's voice shook with agitation--"You will remember I said, a little time back, that I would have something startling to tell you in connection with Barrington-Edwards--something that was not connected with that old army scandal? If it had not been for the high character of my informant; if it had been any other woman in all England I should have thought she was suffering from nerves--fancying things as the result of an overwrought mind sent into a state of hysteria through all those abominable crimes in the neighbourhood; but when it was she, when it was Miss Valmond----" "Oho!" said Cleek, screwing round suddenly. "Then Miss Valmond told you something with regard to Barrington-Edwards?" "Yes--a horrible something. She came to me this morning looking as I hope I shall never see a good woman look again--as if she had been tortured to the last limit of human endurance. She had been fighting a silent battle for weeks and weeks she said, but her conscience would not let her keep the appalling secret any longer, neither would her duty to Heaven. Wakened in the dead of night by a sense of oppression, she had gone to her window to open it for air, and, looking down by chance into the garden of Lemmingham House, she had seen a man come rushing out of the rear door of Barrington-Edwards' place in his pajamas, closely followed by another, whom she believed to be Barrington-Edwards himself, and she had seen that man unlock the door in the side wall and push the poor wretch out into the road where he was afterward found by the constable." "By Jupiter!"