"Oh!" Mrs. Balfame was now righteously indignant. "How do I know? Or any one else? Frieda, soon after, began to make coffee by the quart--and I don't doubt whisky was brought round from the Elks. Who could have noticed a glass more or less?" "Frieda swears she never saw it." "She has the worst memory of any servant I ever had, and that is saying a good deal." Mr. Broderick regarded her with admiration. He distrusted her more every moment, but he had realised at once that he had no ordinary woman to deal with, and he rejoiced in the clash of wits. The other young men were sitting forward, almost breathless, and Mrs. Balfame was now fully alive to the danger of her position. But all sensation of fear had left her. All the iron in her nature fused in the crucible of those terrible moments and came forth finely tempered steel. "Anything more?" "Oh--ah--yes. Would you mind telling us what you did after you had packed the suitcase and brought it downstairs?" "I went up to my room and began to undress for bed." "But that must have been quite fifteen minutes before Mr. Balfame's return. He walked from Cummack's house, which is about a mile from here. It was noticed that you merely had taken your dress off. Would you not have had time to get into bed?" "If I were a man. But I had my hair to brush--with fifty strokes; and--a little nightly massage, if you will have it. Besides, I had intended to go down and lock the front door after my husband had left." "Ah!" The admiration of the young men mounted higher. They disliked her coldly, if only for that lack of sex-magnetism, which men, particularly young men, naive in their extensive surface psychology, take as a personal affront. They did not believe a word she said, and they did not give her and her possible fate a throb of sympathy, but they generously pronounced her "a wonder." Mr. Broderick took a chance shot. "And did you not during that time look out of the window--toward the grove?" Mrs. Balfame hesitated the fraction of a minute, then wisely returned to her know-nothing policy. "Why should I? Certainly not. I heard no sound out there. I am not in the habit of examining the grounds from my window at night. It is enough to go through the lower rooms before I lock up." "But your window was dark when the men ran over from Gifning's after hearing the shot. They remember that. Do you brush your hair--and--and massage in the dark?" Mrs. Balfame sat back in her chair with the resigned air of the victim who expects an interview with inquisitive newspaper men to last all night. "No. But I sometimes sit in the dark. I told you that I intended to sit up--partly dressed--until my husband had gone. I did not feel like reading, and my eyes were tired. As you know so much, you may have guessed that I cried a little after that trying afternoon. I do not often cry, and my eyes stung." "But you had forgiven your husband?" "I had forgiven him many times before. I infer that you know that also."