woman loves him. But there's this secret between us,
and we can never be the same until it is cleared."

"Kindly let me have the facts, Mr. Munro," said
Holmes, with some impatience.

"I'll tell you what I know about Effie's history. She
was a widow when I met her first, though quite
young--only twenty-five. Her name then was Mrs.
Hebron. She went out to America when she was young,
and lived in the town of Atlanta, where she married
this Hebron, who was a lawyer with a good practice.
They had one child, but the yellow fever broke out
badly in the place, and both husband and child died of
it. I have seen his death certificate. This sickened
her of America, and she came back to live with a
maiden aunt at Pinner, in Middlesex. I may mention
that her husband had left her comfortably off, and
that she had a capital of about four thousand five
hundred pounds, which had been so well invested by him
that it returned an average of seven per cent. She
had only been six months at Pinner when I met her; we
fell in love with each other, and we married a few
weeks afterwards.

"I am a hop merchant myself, and as I have an income
of seven or eight hundred, we found ourselves
comfortably off, and took a nice eighty-pound-a-year
villa at Norbury. Our little place was very
countrified, considering that it is so close to town.