“You still think these words were addressed to you by your wife; that in short they contain an explanation of her death?” “I do.” There was sharpness in the tone. Mr. Jeffrey was feeling the prick. There was agitation in it, too; an agitation he was trying hard to keep down. “You have reason, then,” persisted the coroner, “for accepting this peculiar explanation of your wife’s death; a death which, in the judgment of most people, was of a nature to call for the strongest provocation possible.” “My wife was not herself. My wife was in an over strained and suffering condition. For one so nervously overwrought many allowances must be made. She may have been conscious of not responding fully to my affection. That this feeling was strong enough to induce her to take her life is a source of unspeakable grief to me, but one for which you must find explanation, as I have so often said, in the terrors caused by the dread event at the Moore house, which recalled old tragedies and emphasized a most unhappy family tradition.” The coroner paused a moment to let these words sink into the ears of the jury, then plunged immediately into what might be called the offensive part of his examination. “Why, if your wife’s death caused you such intense grief, did you appear so relieved at receiving this by no means consoling explanation?” At an implication so unmistakably suggestive of suspicion Mr. Jeffrey showed fire for the first time. “Whose word have you for that? A servant’s, so newly come into my house that her very features are still strange to me. You must acknowledge that a person of such marked inexperience can hardly be thought to know me or to interpret rightly the feelings of my heart by any passing look she may have surprised upon my face.” This attitude of defiance so suddenly assumed had an effect he little realized. Miss Tuttle stirred for the first time behind her veil, and Uncle David, from looking bored, became suddenly quite attentive. These two but mirrored the feelings of the general crowd, and mine especially. “We do not depend on her judgment alone,” the coroner now remarked. “The change in you was apparent to many others. This we can prove to the jury if they require it.” But no man lifting a voice from that gravely attentive body, the coroner proceeded to inquire if Mr. Jeffrey felt like volunteering any explanations on this head. Receiving no answer from him either, he dropped the suggestive line of inquiry and took up the consideration of facts. The first question he now put was: “Where did you find the slip of paper containing these last words from your wife?” “In a book I picked out of the book-shelf in our room upstairs. When Loretta gave me my wife’s message I knew that I should find some word from her in the novel we had just been reading. As we had been interested in but one book since our marriage, there was no possibility of my making any mistake as to which one she referred.”