husband's friends--some might be jealous of you. I want to tell you that
I am not one of that kind. I love my husband so utterly, so entirely,
that all whom he loves are dear to me. You are a brother, friend,
everything to him--will you be the same to me?"

A beautiful woman asking, with those sweet, sensitive lips, for my
friendship, looking at me with those calm, tender eyes, asking me to
like her for her husband's sake--the sweetest, the most gracious, the
most graceful picture I had ever seen. Yet, oh, Heaven! a murderess, if
ever there was one! She wondered why I did not respond to her advances.
I read the wonder in her face.

"You do not care for hasty friends," she said. "Well, Lance and I are
one; if you like him, you must like me, and time will show."

"You are more than good to me," I stammered, thinking in my heart if she
had been but half as good to the little helpless child she flung into
the sea.

I have never seen a woman more charming--of more exquisite grace--of
more perfect accomplishment--greater fascination of manner. She sang to
us, and her voice was full of such sweet pathos it almost brought the
tears in my eyes. I could not reconcile what I saw now with what I had
seen on the Chain Pier, though outwardly the same woman I had seen on
the Chain Pier and this graceful, gracious lady could not possibly be
one. As the evening passed on, and I saw her bright, cheerful ways, her
devotion to her husband, her candid, frank open manner, I came to the
conclusion that I must be the victim either of a mania or of some
terrible mistake. Was it possible, though, that I could have been? Had I
not had the face clearly, distinctly, before me for the past three