by his marriage with Miss Moore.

But his manner and careful choice of words in making this denial
did not satisfy those present of his entire candor; especially as
Miss Tuttle, for all her apparent immobility, showed, by the violent
locking of her hands, both her anxiety and the suffering she was
undergoing during this painful examination. Was the suffering merely
one of outraged delicacy? We felt justified in doubting it, and
looked forward, with cruel curiosity I admit, to the moment when
this renowned and universally admired beauty would be called on to
throw aside her veil axed reveal the highly praised features which
had been so openly scorned for the sake of one whose chief claims
to regard lay in her great wealth.

But this moment was as yet far distant. The coroner was a man of
method, and his plan was now to prove, as had been apparent to most
of us from the first, that the assumption of suicide on the part of
Mrs. Jeffrey was open to doubt. The communication suggesting such
an end to her troubles was the strongest proof Mr. Jeffrey could
bring forward that her death had been the result of her own act.
Consequently it was now the coroner's business to show that this
communication was either a forgery, or a substitution, and that if
she left some word in the book to which she had in so peculiar a
manner directed his attention, it was not necessarily the one
bewailing her absence of love for him and her consequent intention
of seeking relief from her disappointment in death.

Some hint of what the coroner contemplated had already escaped him
in the persistent and seemingly inconsequent questions to which he
had subjected this witness in reference to these very matters. But