'The cause of death?' echoed Lucy. 'But--she fell.' 'Whether it were an accident or done on purpose.' 'Done on----?' 'Suicide.' 'Oh----' She drew in her breath quickly. 'But--it wasn't?' 'How could it be? She was my wife, without a care in the world, everything done for her, no troubles, nothing on her mind, nothing wrong with her health. We had been married fifteen years, and I was devoted to her--devoted to her.' He banged his knee with his free hand. His voice was full of indignant tears. 'Then why did the jury----' 'My wife had a fool of a maid--I never could stand that woman--and it was something she said at the inquest, some invention or other about what my wife had said to her. You know what servants are. It upset some of the jury. You know juries are made up of anybody and everybody--butcher, baker, and candle-stick-maker--quite uneducated most of them, quite at the mercy of any suggestion. And so instead of a verdict of death by misadventure, which would have been the right one, it was an open verdict.' 'Oh, how terrible--how terrible for you,' breathed Lucy, her eyes on his, her mouth twitching with sympathy. 'You'd have seen all about it if you had read the papers last week,' said Wemyss, more quietly. It had done him good to get it out and talked over. He looked down at her upturned face with its horror-stricken eyes and twitching mouth. 'Now tell me about yourself,' he said, touched with compunction; nothing that had happened to her could be so horrible as what had happened to him, still she too was newly smitten, they had met on a common ground of disaster, Death himself had been their introducer. 'Is life all--only death?' she breathed, her horror-stricken eyes on his. Before he could answer--and what was there to answer to such a question except that of course it wasn't, and he and she were just victims of a monstrous special unfairness,--he certainly was; her father had probably died as fathers did, in the usual way in his bed--before he could answer, the two women came out of the house, and with small discreet steps proceeded down the path to the gate. The sun flooded their spare figures and their decent black clothes, clothes kept for these occasions as a mark of respectful sympathy. One of them saw Lucy under the mulberry tree and hesitated, and then came across the grass to her with the mincing steps of tact. 'Here's somebody coming to speak to you,' said Wemyss, for Lucy was sitting with her back to the path. She started and looked round. The woman approached hesitatingly, her head on one side, her hands folded, her face pulled into a little smile intended to convey encouragement and pity. 'The gentleman's quite ready, miss,' she said softly. III