"He was very happy, then?" murmured my companion, looking for an
instant away, as if he could not bear the intensity of my gaze.

"He loved deeply a noble woman; they were to have been married in a
month; does that look like happiness?" I asked.

The roving eye came back, fixed itself upon me, and turned
dangerously dark and deep.

"It _looks_ like it," he emphasized, and a strange smile passed
over his lips, the utter melancholy of which was all that was plain
to me.

"And it _was_!" I persisted, determined not to yield an iota of
my convictions to the persuasiveness of this man. "The woman who
knew him best declared it to be so as she was dying; and I am forced
to trust in her judgment, whatever the opinion of others may be."

"But happy men----" he began.

"Sometimes meet with accidents," I completed.

"And your credulity is sufficient to allow you to consider Mr.
Barrows' death as the result of accident?"

Lightly as the question was put, I felt that nothing but a deep
anxiety had prompted it, else why that earnest gaze from which my
own could not falter, or that white line showing about the lip he
essayed in vain to steady? Recoiling inwardly, though I scarcely
knew why, I forced myself to answer with the calmness of an