"It was Franklin who was with you at the Hotel D----?" She uttered a cry. "And it was Franklin who connived at your change of clothing there, and advised or allowed you to dress yourself in a new suit from Altman's?" "Oh!" she cried again. "Then why should it not have been he who accompanied you to the Chinaman's, and afterwards took you in a second hack to the house in Gramercy Park?" "Known, known, all known!" was her moan. "Sin and crime cannot long remain hidden in this world, Miss Oliver. The police are acquainted with all your movements from the moment you left the Hotel D----. That is why I have compassion on you. I wish to save you from the consequences of a crime you saw committed, but in which you took no hand." "O," she exclaimed in one involuntary burst, as she half rose to her knees, "if you could save me from appearing in the matter at all! If you would let me run away----" But Mr. Gryce was not the man to give her hope on any such score. "Impossible, Miss Oliver. You are the only person who can witness for the guilty. If _I_ should let you go, the police would not. Then why not tell at once whose hand drew the hat-pin from your hat and----" "Stop!" she shrieked; "stop! you kill me! I cannot bear it! If you bring that moment back to my mind I shall go mad! I feel the horror of it rising in me now! Be still! I pray you, for God's sake, to be still!" This was mortal anguish; there was no acting in this. Even he was startled by the emotion he had raised, and sat for a moment without speaking. Then the necessity of providing against all further mistakes by fixing the guilt where it belonged, drove him on again, and he said: "Like many another woman before you, you are trying to shield a guilty man at your own expense. But it is useless, Miss Oliver; the truth always comes to light. Be advised, then, and make a confidant of one who understands you better than you think." But she would not listen to this. "No one understands me. I do not understand myself. I only know that I shall make a confidant of no one; that I shall never speak." And turning from him, she buried her head in the bedclothes. To most men her tone and the action which accompanied it would have been final. But Mr. Gryce possessed great patience. Waiting for just a moment till she seemed more composed, he murmured gently: "Not if you must suffer more from your silence than from speaking? Not if men--I do not mean myself, child, for I am your friend--will think that _you_ are to blame for the death of the woman whom you saw fall under a cruel stab, and whose rings you have?" "_I!_" Her horror was unmistakable; so were her surprise, her terror, and her shame, but she added nothing to the word she had uttered, and he was forced to say again: "The world, and by that I mean both good people and bad, will believe all this. _He_ will let them believe all this. Men have not the devotion of women."