evidently gloating over the disclosures being made by the
witness. I felt my anger rise, and I determined then and there
that if suspicion of guilt or complicity should by any chance
unjustly light on that brave and lovely girl, I would make the
effort of my life to clear her from it.

"You did not come down again," the coroner went on pointedly, "to
ask your uncle if he had changed his will?"

"No, I did not," she replied, with such a ring of truth in her
scornful voice, that my confidence returned, and I truly believed
her.

"Then you were not in your uncle's office last evening at all?"

"I was not."

"Nor through the day?"

She reflected a moment. "No, nor through the day. It chanced I
had no occasion to go in there yesterday at all."

At these assertions of Miss Lloyd's, the Frenchman, Louis, looked
greatly disturbed. He tried very hard to conceal his agitation,
but it was not at all difficult to read on his face an endeavor
to look undisturbed at what he heard.

I hadn't a doubt, myself, that the man either knew something that
would incriminate Miss Lloyd, or that they two had a mutual
knowledge of some fact as yet concealed.