“Gita?” Polly, who was sitting on the desk in the study swinging her feet, thrilled by the tragic tale of which Elsie had given her a bare hint on the telephone, almost fell off. She had responded to the urgent summons because she knew that Geoffrey was in Atlantic City, but although she had listened agape to the recital, she had merely assumed that Elsie was giving her an inside seat; certainly her due. “I don’t understand.” “Oh, she’s in love with him and he with her. I’ve known it for some time.” “Then mother was right,” muttered Polly, and although she rarely risked cutting lines on her lovely forehead, she frowned until her eyebrows met. “But it’s hard to believe it.” “She’s only recently waked up to the fact—I can’t say just when—I’ve felt it in the air. He’s been interested from the first; that’s the reason he stayed away from her in town. I’ve seen a good deal of him this last winter—stayed with him, you remember. I soon discovered she was haunting him; and something must have happened the night of your mother’s party, for I took lunch with him next day and he was as nervous as a cat and wouldn’t let me mention Gita’s name——” “I know!” And Polly repeated the shrewd observations of her mother. “There you are! I don’t propose to have my brother’s life ruined. I don’t know what Eustace will do after this. I should think he’d never want to see her again, but possibly he may be more infatuated with her than ever, go on trying to win her. Fiction-writers are the complete morons where their own love-affairs are concerned. But he _might_ consent to divorce her, and then Geoffrey would see no further reason for standing aside. That is if he could still love a woman who tried to murder her husband—but when men are mad about a woman’s black eyes——” “But you surely don’t think Gita knew it was Eustace?” The digression was unpalatable. “Yes, I do. She might have run up for her pistol, thinking it was a burglar, but he must have spoken——” “Not if he went there with the purpose you think—might have thought it the wisest policy to——I can’t quite work it out. Didn’t she give you a hint of how it all happened? Are you sure she ever believed it was a burglar? May there not have been an interview in which Eustace lost his head—and the pistol went off accidentally?” “I’d think that a plausible explanation if it were not that the shooting took place downstairs in the library, and she’s not the sort to carry a pistol round, even at night—she hadn’t gone to bed, either. No, she heard him in the library, went up and got her pistol, then guessed who it was, saw her chance, and shot him.” But Polly shook her always reasonable head. “Gita is no double-dyed movie villainess. I believe her story—and I’m rather surprised at you.” She looked at Elsie sharply, and guessed her secret. “It’s not like you, you know.”