“Oh!” she moaned, as her eyes fell on the little white shred. “The providence of God has found us out. We have suffered, labored and denied in vain.” “Yes,” came in dreary echo from the man none of us had understood till now; “so great a crime could not be hid. God will have vengeance. What are we that we should hope to avert it by any act or at any cost?” The major, with his eyes fixed piercingly on this miserable man, replied with one pregnant sentence: “Then you forced your wife to suicide?” “No,” he began; but before another word could follow, Miss Tuttle, resplendent in beauty and beaming with new life, broke in with the fervid cry: “You wrong him and you wrong her by such a suggestion. It was not her husband but her conscience that forced her to this retributive act. What Mr. Jeffrey might have done had she proved obdurate and blind to the enormity of her own guilt, I do not know. But that he is innocent of so influencing her is proved by the shock he suffered at finding she had taken her punishment into her own hands.” “Mr. Jeffrey will please answer the question,” insisted the major. Whereupon the latter, with great effort, but with the first appearance of real candor yet seen in him, said earnestly: “I did nothing to influence her. I was in no condition to do so. I was benumbed—dead. When first she told me,—it was in some words muttered in her sleep—I thought she was laboring under some fearful nightmare; but when she persisted, and I questioned her, and found the horror true, I was like a man turned instantly into stone, save for one intolerable throb within. I am still so; everything passes by me like a dream. She was so young, seemingly so innocent and light-hearted. I loved her! Gentlemen, you have thought me guilty of my wife’s death,—this young fairy-like creature to whom I ascribed all the virtues! and I was willing, willing that you should think so, willing even to face the distrust and opprobrium of the whole world,—and so was her sister, the noble woman whom you see before you—rather than that the full horror of her crime should be known and a name so dear be given up to execration. We thought we could keep the secret—we felt that we _must_ keep the secret—we took an oath—in French—in the carriage with the detectives opposite us. _She_ kept it—God bless her! _I_ kept it. But it was all useless—a tiny bit of lace is found hanging to a lifeless splinter, and all our efforts, all the hopes and agony of weeks are gone for naught. The world will soon know of her awful deed—and I—” He still loved her! That was apparent in every look, in every word he uttered. We marveled in awkward silence, and were glad when the major said: “The deed, as I take it, was an unpremeditated one on her part. Is that why her honor was dearer to you than your own, and why you could risk the reputation if not the life of the woman who you say sacrificed herself to it?”