“Poor girl! poor girl! So happy yesterday!” said Matthew Dalbrook. His son sat silent, as if he were made of stone. Far, very far off, as it were at the end of a long dark vista, cut sharply across an impenetrable wood of choking thorns and blinding briars, he saw Juanita again radiant, again happy, again loving and beloved, and on the threshold of another life. The vision dazzled him, almost to blindness. But could it ever be? Could that loving heart ever forget this agony of to-day—ever beat again to a joyful measure? He wrenched himself from that selfish reverie; he felt a wretch for having yielded up his imagination, even for a moment, to that alluring vision. He was here to mourn with her, here to pity her—to sympathize with this unspeakable grief. Murdered! Her lover-husband shot to death by an unknown hand, her honeymoon ended with one murderous flash—that honeymoon which had seemed the prelude to a lifetime of love. “I should like to see her,” said Mr. Dalbrook. “I think it would be a comfort to her to see me, however agitated she may be. Will you take my name to the housekeeper, and ask her opinion?” Lambert looked doubtful as to the wisdom of the course, but was ready to obey all the same. “Mr. Dolby said she was to be kept very quiet, sir—that she wasn’t to see anybody.” “That would hardly apply to her own people. Mr. Dolby telegraphed for me.” “Did he, sir? Then I conclude he would not object to her ladyship seeing you. I’ll send up your name. Perhaps, while the message is being taken, you would like to have a look at the spot where it happened?” “Yes. I want to know all that can be known.” Lambert had been so busy with the constable all the morning that he felt himself almost on a level with Scotland Yard talent, and he took a morbid interest in that dark stain on the delicate half tints of the velvet pile, and in such few details as he was able to expound. He despatched a footman upstairs, and he led the Dalbrooks to the drawing-room, where he opened the shutters of that window through which the assassin must have aimed, and let a flood of sunshine into the darkened room. The chair, the table, and lamp stood exactly as they had stood last night. Lambert took credit to himself for not having allowed them to be moved by so much as an inch. “Any assistance in my power I shall be only too happy to give to the London detective,” he said. “Of course, coming on the scene as a total stranger, he can’t be expected to do much without help.” There was no need to point out that ghastly stain upon the carpet. The shaft of noonday sunshine seemed to concentrate its brightness on that grisly patch. Dark, dark, dark with the witness of a cruel murder—the murder of a man who had never done an unkindly act, or harboured an unworthy thought.