world knew from her photographs--of great personal attractiveness,
and who was also the heiress to a considerable property? Could he
have been there, then, by appointment, without the father's
knowledge? Was this the common case of a clandestine assignation?
Could the father have returned to the house unexpectedly, at an
inopportune moment, and found his daughter there, closeted with a
stranger--perhaps with a man who had already, for sufficient
grounds, been forbidden the premises? Such things might be, in this
world that we live in: he would be a bold man who would deny them
categorically. Could an altercation have arisen on the father's
return, and the fatal shot have been fired in the ensuing scuffle?
And could the young lady then have feigned this curious relapse into
that Second State we had all heard so much about, for no other
reason than to avoid giving evidence at a trial for murder against
her guilty lover?

These were suggestions that deserved the closest consideration of
the Authorities charged with the repression of crime. Was it not
high time that the inquest on Mr. Callingham's body should be
formally reopened, and that the young lady, now restored (as we
gathered) to her own seven senses, should be closely interrogated by
trained legal cross-examiners?

I laid down the paper with a burning face. I learned now, for the
first time, how closely my case had been watched, how eagerly my
every act and word had been canvassed. It was hateful to think of my
photograph having been exposed in every London shop-window, and of
anonymous slanderers being permitted to indite such scandal as this
about an innocent woman. But, at any rate, it had the effect of
sealing my fate. If I meant even before to probe this mystery to the