lingered admiringly over flower after flower. Yet she said little; more
than once she paused entirely to let me if I chose change the subject, and
when at the gate I did so, she stood like a captive, looking steadily into
my face with eyes as helpless as a half-fledged bird's and as lovely as
its mother's. When I drew something from my breastpocket, they did not
move.

"This," I said, "is the letter that was found on the Baron the night he
was taken ill. Your husband handed it to me supposing, of course, I had
written it, as it was in one of my envelopes, and he happens not to know
my handwriting. But I did not write it. I had never seen it, yet it was
sent in one of my envelopes. I haven't mentioned it to anyone else,
because--you see?--I hope you do. I thought--well, frankly, I thought if I
should mention it first to you I might never need to mention it to anyone
else." I waited a moment and then asked, eyes and all: "Who could have
sent it?"

"Isn't," she began, but her voice failed, and when it came again it was
hardly more than a whisper, "isn't it signed?"

Now, that was just what I did not know. Whatever the thing was, I had
never taken it from the envelope. But the moment she asked I knew. I knew
it bore no signature. We gazed into each other's eyes for many seconds
until hers tried to withdraw. Then I said--and the words seemed to drop
from my lips unthought--"It didn't have to be signed, Mrs. Fontenette,
although the handwriting is disguised."

Poor Flora! I can but think, even yet, I was kinder than if I had been
kind; but it was brutal, and I felt myself a brute, thus to be holding her
up to herself there on the open sidewalk where she dared not even weep or