"You mean Decherd?" She nodded, her hand at her throat. "I'm afraid of him," she said. "He'll kill me. He'll kill me some day, surely. I wanted you--I wanted you to take care of me. I--I've always thought so much of you, Mr. Eddring." She reached out to him a pitiful hand, and on her face was the horrible mask of a woman endeavoring feminine arts while upon her soul there sat naught but horror and personal concern. Eddring looked at her in simple pity. "Be seated here, Madam," said he. "Be quiet, and make yourself at ease. The safest thing you can do is to tell me the whole truth. I want your story, and I must have it. That will be the safest thing for you." "But I don't want--I don't want any one to hear us." "No one need hear us. We shall not need even a notary or a clerk. Talk to me freely, and afterward I will make a memorandum, which you can attest. In the case of a contested land title, that can later be introduced under a bill for the perpetuation of the evidence. You must simply tell me the truth, now, and in your own way." The face of Alice Ellison grew more haggard. Suddenly all the weakness of her sex swept over her--all the weakness also of the wrong-doer. The comfort of the confessional seemed the sole happiness possible for her. And so it was that she gave to Eddring the first direct confirmation of that which he had by piece-work reasoning convinced himself to be the truth. He first rapidly ran over the salient features of the Loisson story, explaining to her fully his interest In the same, and pointing out to her the certainty of his success as well as the hopelessness of any contest on the part of herself or Decherd. Thereafter his questions induced the other to speak definitely. "You were right about the book," said Alice Ellison. "It was found in the Congressional Library by that man, by Mr. Decherd. I took it from there myself, and I always kept it. The first Louise Loisson married her cousin, I think, in about 1841, and she and her husband came to New Orleans not long after that. Louise Loisson the second was born in 1848 at New Orleans, and she married, as you say, this Mr. Fanning. She was not known as Louise Loisson. Raoul de Loisson turned a very ardent democrat. He was known in New Orleans, or at least publicly known, under the name of Ellison, which form of his name he thought was more American. "Louise, his daughter, was also known under the name of Ellison. She was not married until 1874. Before her marriage she was an orphan, and you might have found, had you been lucky enough, proof of the fact that she was known on the stage of the old French Opera House, even after the close of the Civil War. Her mother died while Louise, the second Louise, was in her youth. Her father, then a major in a Louisiana regiment, was killed during the war, in the fighting near Atlanta.