uttered the most mournful of protests in reply, he shut the front
door and betook himself to the other side of the street.

As I noticed his assured bearing as he disappeared within the
forbidding portal which, according to his own story, had for so long
a time been shut against him, I asked myself if the candle which I
had noticed lying on his mantel-shelf was of the same make and size
as those I had found in my late investigations in the house he was
then entering.




V

GOSSIP


Next morning the city was in a blaze of excitement. All the burning
questions of the hour - the rapid mobilization of the army and the
prospect of a speedy advance on Cuba - were forgotten in the one
engrossing topic of young Mrs. Jeffrey's death and the awful
circumstances surrounding it. Nothing else was in any one's mouth
and but little else in any one's heart. Her youth, her prominence,
her union with a man of such marked attractions as Mr. Jeffrey, the
tragedy connected with her marriage, thrown now into shadow by the
still more poignant tragedy which had so suddenly terminated her
own life, gave to the affair an interest which for those first
twenty-four hours did not call for any further heightening by a
premature suggestion of murder.