It was this feeling which again crept upon me as I sat there in her presence, noting her extreme loveliness. I did not love her now. No; I held her rather in fear and hatred. Yet she was still the most strikingly beautiful woman in all the world. "Then you know how my friend died?" I said, in a rather meaning voice. "It was in the newspapers," she responded. "I saw by them that you gave evidence." I nodded in the affirmative, then said-- "You were here on that fatal morning, and you then told me a fact which has puzzled me ever since, namely, that my poor friend committed suicide at Monte Carlo months before. Do you not think you were mistaken, when you recollect that he died only half an hour after you left me?" "What I told you was the truth," she replied. "I was present when he took his own life." "At Monte Carlo?" "At Monte Carlo!" "Well, how do you account for the fact that for six or seven months afterwards he was here, in London, occupying his seat in the House of Commons, and mixing with his friends, when, if what you say is truth, he was then lying in a grave in the suicides' cemetery at La Turbie?" "I do not attempt to reason," she responded, in a voice which sounded so strange that it appeared far distant, while the cup she still held was shaken by a slight tremor. "I only tell you the true facts. It was myself who identified your friend, and gave his name to the Administration of the Casino." "And you say he killed himself because he lost everything?" "That is what I surmise. Those who have good fortune at the tables do not generally seek the last extremity." "But I knew nothing of his visit there. Even his man was in ignorance," I said. "I cannot help thinking that there must be some mistake. It must have been a man who resembled him." "I know that he went to the Riviera secretly." "Why?" "Because he had devised some system which, like many others before him, he felt certain must result in large winnings, and he did not tell his friends his intentions lest they might jeer at him. He went; he lost; and he killed himself!" "But he lived in London afterwards!" I protested. "I saw him dozens of times--dined with him, played billiards with him, and was visited here by him. He could not possibly have been dead at the time!" "But he was dead!" she declared. "Strange though it may seem, I am ready to swear in any court of law that I was present when Roderick Morgan, the member for South-West Sussex, committed suicide in the Salle Mauresque at Monte Carlo. That fact can no doubt be established in two ways: first, by the register of deaths, and secondly, by exhumation of the body." "But when Roddy was here in London, dining, smoking, and talking with me, how can I believe that he was already dead?"