"Miss Dare, was this ring really yours, or were you misled by its appearance into merely thinking it your property? My excuse for asking this is that the ring, if not yours, is likely to become an important factor in the case to which the murder of this unfortunate woman has led." "Sir----" The pause which followed the utterance of this one word was but momentary, but in it what faint and final hope may have gone down into the depths of everlasting darkness God only knows. "Sir, since you ask me the question, I will say that in one sense of the term it was mine, and in another it was not. The ring was mine, because it had been offered to me as a gift the day before. The ring was not mine, because I had refused to take it when it was offered." At these words, spoken with such quietness they seemed like the mechanical utterances of a woman in a trance, Mr. Ferris started to his feet. He could no longer doubt that evidence of an important nature lay before him. "And may I ask," he inquired, without any idea of the martyrdom he caused, "what was the name of the person who offered you this ring, and from whom you refused to take it?" "The name?" She quavered for a moment, and her eyes flashed up toward heaven with a look of wild appeal, as if the requirement of this moment was more than even she had strength to meet. Then a certain terrible calm settled upon her, blotting the last hint of feeling from her face, and, rising up in her turn, she met Mr. Ferris' inquiring eye, and slowly and distinctly replied: "It was Craik Mansell, sir. He is a nephew of Mrs. Clemmens." It was the name Mr. Ferris had come there to hear, yet it gave him a slight shock when it fell from her lips--perhaps because his mind was still running upon her supposed relations with Mr. Orcutt. But he did not show his feelings, however, and calmly asked: "And was Mr. Mansell in this town the day before the assault upon his aunt?" "He was." "And you had a conversation with him?" "I had." "May I ask where?" For the first time she flushed; womanly shame had not yet vanished entirely from her stricken breast; but she responded as steadily as before: "In the woods, sir, back of Mrs. Clemmens' house. There were reasons"--she paused--"there were good reasons, which I do not feel obliged to state, why a meeting in such a place was not discreditable to us." Mr. Ferris, who had received from other sources a full version of the interview to which she thus alluded, experienced a sudden revulsion of feeling against one he could not but consider as a detected coquette; and, drawing quickly back, made a gesture such as was not often witnessed in those elegant apartments. "You mean," said he, with a sharp edge to his tone that passed over her dreary soul unheeded, "that you were lovers?" "I mean," said she, like the automaton she surely was at that moment, "that he had paid me honorable addresses, and that I had no reason to doubt his motives or my own in seeking such a meeting."