It was the same face he had so recently sat _vis-a-vis_ with in this very office, with one particular difference—the photograph was of a happy, loving girl, while the other had been the face of an anxious woman. Mentally he noted this fact, while looking long and earnestly at the photograph. “Well, what do you think of her?” asked Leslie. He was a tall man, perhaps thirty-five years of age, not handsome, but with a face that won him friends everywhere, for Joe Leslie had a warm heart and was ready to champion the cause of any poor devil in distress. “She’s handsome, Joe—a beauty.” “Anyone can see that—look deeper, man.” “I can see qualities there such as might make her a wife to be proud of, and whom any man might well hesitate to offend.” At this Joe groaned. The shrewd detective thought he had driven one nail home—that his allusion must have hit Leslie in a tender spot—but for once he made a mistake. Just then he was not thinking of his own shortcomings—that groan was the result of mental agony brought about by something else. “Eric, I am in trouble,” he said. The other knew it before he spoke. To himself he was saying: “Now, here’s a surprising thing—I am already retained by the wife, and the husband has come to confess his sins. Shall I listen—he must not bind me to a promise not to tell.” Aloud, he said: “I’m sorry for that, Joe. Tell me all about it and heaven knows I will aid you all I can.” “Thank you, old friend—I knew it before you spoke—that was why I finally determined to come here and unbosom myself.” “It’s coming,” muttered Darrell, smiling grimly. He fully expected to learn the secret of that mysterious house on Twenty-seventh Street. “To think,” said Joe, looking around him at the walls and ceiling, “that here in this den where I spent so many careless, happy bachelor hours with you, I should now be detailing the tribulations of married life.” “Singular—of course,” nodded Eric, apparently observing the ashes on the end of his cigar, but all the while watching Joe’s face. “For of course,” Joe continued, “what I have to say to you concerns—my wife.” “Yes.” The detective was wondering how Joe meant to bring out his confession. He did not dream of anything else. “You have seen that face, Eric”—tapping the photograph—“would you say there was any deceit there?” This was something of a staggerer—the other had not expected the electric fluid to strike in such a quarter at all. “Deceit—in that little woman—well, I’m an old bachelor, Joe, but my judgment is generally conceded sound, and I tell you your wife is a woman of a thousand. Her face speaks of purity and charity—one could not look into the depths of those eyes and not read truth there.” “Good heavens, man! you describe Lillian as I have believed her—one would think you had met her,” cried Leslie, starting out of his moody fit.