hopefully waited for a reconciliation."

"You did love your wife, then? It was you and not she who had a
right to be jealous? I have heard the contrary stated. It is a
matter of public gossip that you loved another woman previous to
your acquaintance with Miss Moore; a woman whom your wife regarded
with sisterly affection and subsequently took into her new home."

"Miss Tuttle?" Mr. Jeffrey stopped in his walk to fling out this
ejaculation. "I admire and respect Miss Tuttle," he went on to
declare, "but I never loved her. Not as I did my wife," he finished,
but with a certain hard accent, apparent enough to a sensitive ear.

"Pardon me; it is as difficult for me to put these questions as it
is for you to hear them. Were you and Miss Tuttle ever engaged?"

I started. This was a question which half of Washington had been
asking itself for the last three months.

Would Mr. Jeffrey answer it? or, remembering that these questions
were rather friendly than official, refuse to satisfy a curiosity
which he might well consider intrusive? The set aspect of his
features promised little in the way of information, and we were
both surprised when a moment later he responded with a grim
emphasis hardly to be expected from one of his impulsive temperament:

"Unhappily, no. My attentions never went so far."

Instantly the coroner pounced on the one weak word which Mr.
Jeffrey had let fall.