“Your husband kept these letters in a concealed cupboard of his dressing-room,” Tarleton told her. “Your house has been searched for a secret hiding-place and the cupboard has been found.” It was a bold shot, but the widow’s face showed that it had hit the mark. “That cupboard is empty now. The law presumes that you opened it, as you were entitled and bound to do, after his death, and that you took possession of its contents as executrix. I am here to ask you in the name of the law what you have done with them.” He watched Dr. Weathered’s relict very closely while he was speaking. She seemed to be wrenched by conflicting fears. At one moment her lips parted as if to speak, at the next they closed again more tightly than before. “Tell him, mother!” pleaded the girl. The mother turned to her despairingly. “I can’t! I daren’t! Don’t ask me to,” she cried hopelessly. The representative of the law looked at his watch. “If that is your last answer you must be prepared to take the consequences, Mrs. Weathered.” He pointed dramatically to a window of the room. “Look out of that window, Miss Neobard, and tell your mother what you see.” Sarah rushed to the window and gave a sharp cry. “Mother, there is a gendarme watching the hotel!” She looked reproachfully at the physician. “And you told me you came here as a friend!” “I am trying to act as one. Your mother has only to tell me the truth and I will open the window and send that man away.” “Do you hear, mother? You won’t let me be arrested?” Mrs. Weathered--Tarleton had meant to remind her that she was passing under a name not legally hers--had merely shivered again when she heard who was outside. Now she sprang out of her chair, a different woman. “You! Arrest you! What do you mean, Sarah? What have you to do with it? The police have come for me.” Sarah was not less amazed and horrified than her mother. “Nonsense; they can’t touch you,” she exclaimed. “You weren’t at the dance that night!” “And you were? My girl, my poor girl, what have you been doing?” “Sir Frank Tarleton knows. I have told him everything. I think he means to be friendly, but he can’t save me unless you speak out. She can speak safely, can’t she?” the daughter asked imploringly. “My mother isn’t in any danger?” It was a question difficult to answer either way. Tarleton felt the eyes of both women searching his face, each with the same anxiety, though each on the other’s behalf. “It is only right that I should let you know that Mrs. Weathered may be in danger. The letters which ought to be in her possession may contain the clue to your step-father’s murder.”