The stare of utter astonishment I gave him called up a flush, the first and only one I have ever seen on his face. What was I to say, what could I say, in response to such a declaration, following so immediately upon his warm assertion of her innocence? Nothing. With that indefinable chill between us, which had come I knew not how, I felt tongue-tied. He saw my embarrassment, possibly my emotion, for he smiled somewhat bitterly and put a step or so between us before he remarked: "Miss Murray has my good wishes. Out of respect to her position I shall show her a friend's attention while we remain in this house. That is all I have to say, Walter. You and I have held our last conversation on this subject." He was gone before I had sufficiently recovered to realize that in this conversation I had had no part, neither had it contained any explanation of the very facts which had once formed our greatest grounds for doubt, namely, Beaton's dream, the smothered cry uttered behind Sinclair's shoulder when he first made known the deadly qualities of the little vial, and lastly, the strange desire acknowledged to by both these young ladies to touch and hold an object calculated rather to repel than to attract the normal feminine heart. At every previous stage of this ever-shifting drama, my instinct had been to set my wits against the facts, and, if I could, puzzle out the mystery. But I felt no such temptation now. My one desire was to act, and that immediately. Dorothy, for all Gilbertine's intimation to the contrary, held the key to the enigma in her own breast. Otherwise, she would not have ventured upon that surprising and necessarily unpalatable advice to Sinclair--an advice he seemed to have followed--not to marry Gilbertine Murray at the time proposed. Nothing, short of a secret acquaintanceship with facts unknown as yet to the rest of us, could have nerved her to such an act. My one hope, then, of understanding the matter lay with her. To seek her at once in the place where I had been told she awaited me seemed the only course to take. If any real gratitude underlay the look of trust which she had given me at the termination of our last interview, she would reward my confidence in her by unbosoming herself to me. I was at the door of the boudoir immediately upon forming this resolution. Finding it ajar, I pushed it softly open, and as softly entered. To my astonishment, the place was very dark. Not only had the shades been drawn down, but the shutters had been closed, so that it was with difficulty I detected the slight, black-robed figure which lay, face down, among the cushions of a lounge. She had evidently not heard my entrance, for she did not move; and, struck by her pathetic attitude, I advanced in a whirl of feeling which made me forget all conventionalities and everything else, in fact, but that I loved her and had the utmost confidence in her power to make me happy. Laying my hand softly on her head, I tenderly whispered: