“Yes, the sun tempted me, but it tried me too much.” Lady Penterton sighed and relapsed into silence. For a minute more Evelyn sat, stroking tenderly the wrinkled hand. “I have something to tell you both,” she said at length. “I am afraid it will distress you. But you will have to know and it is better that I should tell you than any one else.” Lady Penterton turned her head wearily on the pillow towards her, while Celia laid down her book with a sharp intake of the breath. “I have stumbled more by chance than any skill on things the detectives happened to overlook; they had a certain idea in their heads,” she glanced across at Celia to try and read whether she had told her mother of John, and received a quick negative shake of the head, “and perhaps that blinded them to anything else; I don’t know. But I found footmarks and finger-prints they had not seen; and I followed them up.” She paused, uncertain how best to break the conclusion of that following up. Lady Penterton’s agitation at this talk of the tragedy was evident. “My dear child,” she exclaimed, her hand tightening nervously on Evelyn’s, “what an extraordinary thing for you to do!” “Yes, perhaps it was,” admitted Evelyn, “but I didn’t stop to think about that.” “Oh, what did you find? How dreadful it all is!” “I found,” said Evelyn slowly, unwillingly, “that it was done by Fairlie.” “By Fairlie!” uttered the old lady, turning so white that Evelyn thought she was going to faint. “It is dreadful, I know, but, when charged with it, he confessed.” Celia started up, crying in amazement, “Fairlie!” and Lady Penterton with a deep sigh, fell back, her fingers relaxed and she lay white and still. Both girls, terribly alarmed, bent over her; Evelyn ran to the washstand for cold water and then said quickly to Celia, “Send for the doctor! I’ll attend to her.” But as she spoke Lady Penterton recovered herself, her lips moved, and then she said faintly, “Fairlie! Fairlie confessed! Evelyn, was that what you said? No,” to Celia who was slipping out, “stay with me; I don’t want any one.” “I know it is terrible news for you, Aunt Eleanor,” Evelyn said very gently; “but there is no doubt about it, I’m afraid. He did it by flinging down the statuette of the little dancing girl that stands on the bracket by the stairs; you know the one I mean.” She saw a sign of understanding on Lady Penterton’s lips, as she lay rigidly still with eyes closed, and continued, “He left his finger-marks on the pedestal and a footprint underneath. Why he did it I hardly know; he doesn’t really know himself. It was a mad impulse, which he says he can’t explain.” “How dreadful!” exclaimed Celia, pale with emotion. “Oh, how dreadful!”