“It is folly--folly!” she said, as if trying by giving articulation to her thoughts to convince herself against the evidence of her own judgment. “It is folly! He was his friend--Dick Westwood was his friend. Why should he have killed him? He dined at the Court that very night--he--Good God! he was the last to see him alive. Let me think--let me think! What did he say? Yes, he said that Dick had walked across the park with him. He admitted that he was the last person with whom Dick had spoken. Oh, my God--my God! he has written the truth--why should he write anything but the truth? Why should he be mad enough to confess to a crime that he never committed? He killed him, and he is my brother! Oh, fool--fool--that I was! I could not see that that girl was sent through the mercy of God. She was sent here that the man who loved her might be saved from marrying me. But, thank God! I have learned the truth before it is too late.” And then, as she stood there, she recalled the most trivial incidents of the morning after the murder of Dick Westwood. She remembered how late it was when Cyril had appeared--how he had made excuse after excuse for remaining in bed. In every trivial act of his she perceived such evidence of his guilt that she was amazed that no one had attached suspicion to him. Why, even the fact of his having so eagerly accepted the offer of an appointment on a sheep station in Australia should have made her suspect that he had the gravest of reasons for wishing to get away from the country. She now saw that his anxiety was to leave the scene of his crime behind him. Then she thought of the days that preceded his escape--that was how she had come to regard his sailing for Australia--how terrible her trouble had been with him. She had felt that he was going to destruction, idling about the tap-rooms of Bracken-hurst, walking with the most disreputable men to be found in the neighbourhood--utterly regardless of appearances and impatient at her remonstrances. Thinking of all this in the light of the confession which she had just read, she was left to wonder how it was possible that she had failed--that every one in Brackenhurst had failed--to attach suspicion to him. “He did it--he did it!” she whispered. Once again with a flicker of hope that was more dispiriting than despair, she read the letter, and with a cry of agony fell back upon the sofa and laid her head, face downward, upon one of its arms. Claude Westwood had uttered his curse against the murderer of his brother and against all that pertained to him! She had been horrified at the thought of Clare; but the curse had fallen, and she, Agnes, was crushed beneath it. Her brother was on his way home to pay the penalty of his crime, and Clare--