Of course Loretta promised, but she is not sure that she would have had the courage to keep all this to herself if she had not heard Mrs. Jeffrey stop in Miss Tuttle's room on her way out. That relieved her, and enabled her to go downstairs to her own supper with more appetite than she had thought ever to have again. Alas! it was the last good meal she was able to eat for days. In three hours afterward a man came from the station house with the news of Mrs. Jeffrey's suicide in the horrible old house in which she had been married only two weeks before.
As this had been a continuous narrative and concisely told, the coroner had not interrupted her. When at this point a little gasp escaped Miss Tuttle and a groan broke from Francis Jeffrey's hitherto sealed lips, the feelings of the whole assemblage seemed to find utterance. A young wife's misery culminating in death on the very spot where she had been so lately married! What could be more thrilling, or appeal more closely to the general heart of humanity? But the cause of that misery! This was what every one present was eager to have explained. This is what we now expected the coroner to bring out. But instead of continuing on the line he had opened up, he proceeded to ask:
"Where were you when this officer brought the news you mention?"
"In the hall, sir. I opened the door for him."
"And to whom did he first mention his errand?"
"To Miss Tuttle. She had come in just before him and was standing at the foot of the stairs"
"What! Was Miss Tuttle out that evening?"
"Yes; she went out very soon after Mrs. Jeffrey left. When she came in she said that she had been around the block, but she must have gone around it more than once, for she was absent two hours."
"Did you let her in?"
"Yes, sir."
"And she said she had been around the block?"
"Yes, sir"
"Did she say anything else?"
"She asked if Mr. Jeffrey had come in"
"Anything else?"
"Then if Mrs. Jeffrey had returned."
"To both of which questions you answered -"
"A plain 'No.'"
"Now tell us about the officer."
"He rang the bell almost immediately after she did. Thinking she would want to slip upstairs before I admitted any one, I waited a minute for her to go, but she did not do so, and when the officer stepped in she -"
"Well!"
"She shrieked."
"What! before he spoke?"
"Yes, sir."
"Just at sight of him?"
"Yes, sir."
"Did he wear his badge in plain view?"
"Yes, on his breast."
"So that you knew him to be a police officer?"
"Yes."
"And Miss Tuttle shrieked at seeing a police officer?"
"Yes, and sprang forward."
"Did she say anything?"
"Not then."
"What did she do?"
"Waited for him to speak."
"Which he did?"
"At once, and very brutally. He asked if she was Mrs. Jeffrey's sister, and when she nodded and gasped 'Yes,' he blurted out that Mrs. Jeffrey was dead; that he had just come from the old house in Waverley Avenue, where she had just been found."
"And Miss Tuttle?"
"Didn't know what to say; just hid her face. She was leaning against the newel-post, so it was easy for her to do so. I remember that the man stared at her for taking it so quietly and asking no questions."
"And did she speak at all?"
"Oh, yes, afterwards. Her face was wrapped in the folds of her cloak, but I heard her whisper, as if to herself: 'No! no! That old hearth is not a lodestone. She can not have fallen there.'
And then she looked up quite wildly and cried: 'There is something more ! Something which you have not told me.' 'She shot herself, if that's what you mean.' Miss Tuttle's arms went straight up over her head. It was awful to see her. 'Shot herself?' she gasped.
'Oh, Veronica, Veronica!' 'With a pistol,' he went on - I suppose he was going to say, 'tied to her wrist,' but he never got it out, for Miss Tuttle, at the word 'pistol' clapped her hands to her ears and for a moment looked quite distracted, so that he thought better of worrying her any more and only demanded to know if Mr. Jeffrey kept any such weapon. Miss Tuttle's face grew very strange at this.
'Mr. Jeffrey! was he there?' she asked. The man looked surprised.
'They are searching for Mr. Jeffrey,' he replied. 'Isn't he here?
