The kisses; the light, gentle touches of his hands and forehead, as if she might hurt him with the caresses which she could not withhold; the intent look which continually watched him as if expecting an answer; the miserable smile upon her white face--these were things which haunted those who saw them through many a future slumber. "You will not say you forgive me for singing last night. You don't say a word to me--because you are dead--that's it--because you are dead--murdered!" The echo of her own last word recalled her wandering reason. "My God! murdered!" she exclaimed, suddenly rising to her full hight, with an awful air; "who do you suppose did it?" Her cousin was standing near; her eyes fell upon him as she asked the question. The look, the manner, were too much for his already overwrought sensibility; he shrunk away, caught my arm, and sunk down, insensible. I did not wonder. We all of us felt as if we could endure no more. Going to the family physician, who waited in another apartment, I begged of him to use some influence to withdraw Miss Argyll from the room, and quiet her feelings and memory, before her brain yielded to the strain upon it. After giving us some directions what to do with James, he went and talked with her, with so much wisdom and tact, that the danger to her reason seemed passing; persuading her also into taking the powder which he himself administered; but no argument could induce her to leave the mute, unanswering clay. The arrival of the relatives was the last scene in the tragedy of that day. Unable to bear more of it, I went out in the darkness and walked upon the lawn. My head was hot; the cool air felt grateful to me; I leaned long upon the trunk of an oak, whose dark shadow shut out the starlight from about me; thought was busy with recent events. Who was the murderer? The question revolved in my brain, coming uppermost every other moment, as certainly as the turning of a wheel brings a certain point again and again to the top. My training, as a student of the law, helped my mind to fix upon every slightest circumstance which might hold a suspicion. "Could that woman?"--but no, the hand of a woman could scarcely have given that sure and powerful blow. It looked like the work of a _practiced_ hand--or, if not, at least it had been deliberately given, with malice aforethought. The assassin had premeditated the deed; had watched his victim and awaited the hour. Thus far, there was absolutely no clue whatever to the guilty party; bold as was the act, committed in the early evening, in the haunts of a busy community, it had been most fatally successful; and the doer had vanished as completely as if the earth had opened and swallowed him up. No one, as yet, could form any plausible conjecture, even as to the _motive_.