Then Miss Joan Duplessis was called. When the young girl stepped forward there was that awed hush in the room which usually falls upon an attentive audience when the curtain is about to rise on the crucial act of a dramatic play. But she was calm and self-possessed, and wonderfully pathetic-looking in her deep black and with the obvious lines of sorrow which the sad death of a faithful friend had traced on her young face. In answer to the coroner, she gave her name as Joan Clarissa Duplessis, and briefly stated that until the day of her servant’s death she had been a resident at Fordwych Castle, but that since then she had left that temporary home, and had taken up her abode at the d’Alboukirk Arms, a quiet little hostelry on the outskirts of the town. There was a distinct feeling of astonishment on the part of those who were not aware of this fact, and then the coroner said kindly: “You were born, I think, in Pondicherry, in India, and are the younger daughter of Captain and Mrs. Duplessis, who was own sister to her ladyship?” “I was born in Pondicherry,” replied the young girl, quietly, “and I am the only legitimate child of the late Captain and Mrs. Duplessis, own sister to her ladyship.” A wave of sensation, quickly suppressed by the coroner, went through the crowd at these words. The emphasis which the witness had put on the word “legitimate” could not be mistaken, and everyone felt that here must lie the clue to the, so far impenetrable, mystery of the Indian woman’s death. All eyes were now turned on old Lady d’Alboukirk and on her niece Henriette, but the two ladies were carrying on a whispered conversation together, and had apparently ceased to take any further interest in the proceedings. “The deceased was your confidential maid, was she not?” asked the coroner, after a slight pause. “Yes.” “She came over to England with you recently?” “Yes; she had to accompany me in order to help me to make good my claim to being my late mother’s only legitimate child, and therefore the heir to the barony of d’Alboukirk.” Her voice had trembled a little as she said this, but now, as breathless silence reigned in the room, she seemed to make a visible effort to control herself, and, replying to the coroner’s question, she gave a clear and satisfactory account of her terrible discovery of her faithful servant’s death. Her evidence had lasted about a quarter of an hour or so, when suddenly the coroner put the momentous question to her: “Do you know anything about the papers which the deceased woman carried about her person, and reference to which has already been made?”