“But now, face to face at last with you whose monstrous plot I was at least able to detect, if I could not baffle it--I yet cheat you!” he cried. “I cheat you of your complete vengeance! You thought to condemn me to the ignominy of a murderer’s trial!” He laughed again. “I elude you--thus!” With a quick movement he raised the revolver and fired. The two friends, after the moment in which they recovered from the shock, bent over his body. “I don’t understand!” said Williamson, horror-stricken and mystified. “Who and what was he?” Gilchrist answered him in one terse word. “Mad,” he replied, pushing away the white dog, which sniffed innocently at the body. A POINT OF ETHICS He leaned forward across the flower-decked dinner-table and raised his glass. “To many happy anniversaries, darling!” The pretty woman he addressed raised her glass also. Gowned in a simple evening robe whose discreet _décolletage_ revealed shoulders still youthfully rounded, she was the incarnation of that delicate refinement which lifts beauty into charm with one deft touch. The single dark rose at her breast was its present symbol. It was also, indubitably, the deliberate symbol of something more. The large, emotional eyes which smiled upon him were radiant with happiness. “_Many_ anniversaries, Jack!” she echoed, shaking her head slowly in emphasis, her gaze in his. “All as happy as this--all of us together!” Both turned, as with a common thought, to the demure little five-year-old girl who watched them with grave eyes from her place at the dinner-table. She smiled at their smiles, confidently. “I’m as fond of her as you are, Evelyn,” he said, with evident sincerity. “Never fear! I couldn’t love her more if she were my own daughter.” “You couldn’t be kinder to her, Jack,” said the young woman, in affectionate agreement. “Oh, my dear, we are very fortunate, both of us, Dorothy and I! Without you!” she sighed. “A whole year! A whole year of perfect happiness! I thought I was happy before--but I did not know what happiness was--until it began a year ago to-day!” He smiled. “Nor I, Evelyn. Looking back, it seems that I only began to live on the day I married you.” He glanced around him. “A year ago!--You were right, dear, to have our little dinner here to-night, and not at River Lawn. You were right to keep this place going--it reminds us both of our starting-point.” His tone warmed with affection. “But then, you are always right!” She beamed with gratitude.