Miss Tuttle's head drooped. Probably she realized at this moment, if not before, that the coroner and jury had ample excuse for mistrusting one who had been so unmistakably caught in a prevarication; possibly her regret carried her far enough to wish she had not disdained all legal advice from those who had so earnestly offered it. But though she showed alike her shame and her disheartenment, she did not give up the struggle.
"If I went into the house," she said, "it was not to enter that room.
I had too great a dread of it. If I rested my head against the wall it was in terror of that shot. It came so suddenly and was so frightful, so much more frightful than anything you can conceive."
"Then you did enter the house?"
"I did."
"And it was while you were inside, instead of outside, that you heard the shot?"
"I must admit that, too. I was at the library door."
"You acknowledge that?"
"I do."
"But you did not enter the library?"
"No, not then; not till I was taken back by the officer who told me of my sister's death"
"We are glad to hear this precise statement from you. It encourages me to ask again the nature of the freak which took you into this house. You say that it was not from any dread on your sister's account? What, then, was it? No evasive answer will satisfy us, Miss Tuttle."
She realized this as no one else could.
Mr. Jeffrey's reason for his visit there could not be her reason, yet what other had she to give? Apparently none.
"I can not answer," she said.
And the deep sigh which swept through the room was but an echo of the despair with which she saw herself brought to this point.
"We will not oblige you to," said the coroner with apparent consideration. But to those who knew the law against forcing a witness to incriminate himself, this was far from an encouraging concession.
"However," he now went on, with suddenly assumed severity, "you may answer this. Was the house dark or light when you entered it?
And, how did you get in?"
"The house was dark, and I got in through the front door, which I found ajar."
"You are more courageous than most women! I fear there are few of your sex who could be induced to enter it in broad daylight and under every suitable protection."
She raised her figure proudly.
"Miss Tuttle, you have heard Chloe say that you were in the kitchen of Mr. Jeffrey's house when the grocer boy delivered the candles which had been left by your brother-in-law on the counter of the store where he bought them. Is this true?"
"Yes, sir, it is true."
"Did you see those candles?"
"No, sir."
"You did not see them?"
"No, sir."
"Yet you went over to the table?"
"Yes, sir, but I did not meddle with the packages. I had really no business with them."
The coroner, surveying her sadly, went quickly on as if anxious to terminate this painful examination.
"You have not told us what you did when you heard that pistol-shot."
"I ran away as soon as I could move; I ran madly from the house."
"Where?"
"Home."
"But it was half-past ten when you got home."
"Was it?"
"It was half-past ten when the man came to tell you of your sister's death."
"It may have been."
"Your sister is supposed to have died in a few minutes. Where were you in the interim?"
"God knows. I do not."
A wild look was creeping into her face, and her figure was swaying.
But she soon steadied it. I have never seen a more admirable presence maintained in the face of a dreadful humiliation.
"Perhaps I can help you," rejoined the coroner, not unkindly. "Were you not in the Congressional Library looking up at the lunettes and gorgeously painted walls?"
"I?" Her eyes opened wide in wondering doubt. "If I was, I did not know it. I have no remembrance of it."
She seemed to lose sight of her present position, the cloud under which she rested, and even the construction which might be put upon such a forgetfulness at a time confessedly prior to her knowledge of the purpose and effect of the shot from which she had so incontinently fled.
"Your condition of mind and that of Mr. Jeffrey seem to have been strangely alike," remarked the coroner.
"No, no!" she protested.
"Arguing a like source."
"No, no," she cried again, this time with positive agony. Then with an effort which awakened respect for her powers of mind, if for nothing else, she desperately added: "I can not say what was in his heart that night, but I know what was in mine - dread of that old house, to which I had been drawn in spite of myself, possibly by the force of the tragedy going on inside it, culminating in a delirium of terror, which sent me flying in an opposite direction from my home and into places I had been accustomed to visit when my heart was light and untroubled."
The coroner glanced at the jury, who unconsciously shook their heads.
He shook his, too, as he returned to the charge.
