"Oh, well, when things get into that shape somebody's bound to be killed! When a Kentuckian is accused of cowardice he has to kill somebody to prove his courage. There's nothing else to be done--apparently. And it might as well have been Betts as anybody else." She yawned, and swayed her turkey-wing fan. "It would all have blown over and have passed, as all such things pass in this country, if John Stanley hadn't been morbid about it, if he had been at all like other people. Of course he was acquitted at the examining trial. There were plenty of witnesses to the fact that he fired in self-defence. The family of the man who was killed never made a motion toward taking the matter up, and they would have been ready enough to do it if they could have found any pretext for blaming John. They were, in fact, rather looked down on for taking it so easy. But John has never forgiven himself; he has always thought he might have done something else than what he did. He has rarely mentioned it to any one, but I understand that he once told Miss Judy that, if it were to do over again, he would run the risk of being killed himself rather than take the life of any human being. As I have said, he was always very religious, even then, and this was, I suppose, the reason why he brooded so over the affair. To this day he's more like a praying monk shut up in a cell than he's like the famous judge of a large circuit." "Of course he never married," said Lynn. "Oh, yes, he did--but not for a long time; not for years and years after that Spanish tiger had made an end of that foolish little kitten. Alice lived only a few months. They said that Alvarado wasn't unkind; that he even tried to be kind in his way. But Alice seemed to hate him--as much as she was capable of hating anybody--when she found out how he had tricked her; that he hadn't taken poison at all when he pretended he had, and that the awful-looking foam on his lips had come from chewing soap." "Don't--don't!" cried the young man. "Leave the romance. Tell me about Judge Stanley--though he too has done what he could to spoil the story by marrying. What sort of woman is his wife? Poor little Alice!"