now."

Great Heaven! how could this woman be a murderess—the beautiful face, the clear, limpid eyes—how could it be? No sweeter mouth ever smiled, and the light that lay on her face was the light of Heaven itself. How could it be?

She seemed to wonder a little at my coldness, for she added:

"I cannot tell you how pleased I am to see you, and Lance has thought of nothing else during the last week."

I wonder that I didn't cry out, "You are the woman who drowned the little child off the Chain Pier." It was only the sight of Lance's face that deterred me. I had some vague, indistinct notion of what those words would be to him.

"What is the matter, John?" asked Lance, impatiently. "The sight of my wife's face seems to have struck you dumb."

"It must be with admiration, then," I said, making a desperate effort to recover myself. "I could almost think I had seen Mrs. Fleming's face before."

She looked at me frankly, and she laughed frankly.

"I have a good memory for faces," she said; "and I do not remember to have seen yours."

There was no shadow of fear or of any effect at concealment; she did not change color or shrink from me.

Lance laughed aloud.

"I wonder no longer at your being a bachelor," he said; "if the sight of a beautiful face produces such a strange effect on you. You must deal gently with him, Frances," he said to his wife; "his nerves are weak—he cannot bear much at a time."

"I promise to be very gentle," she said; and the music of that low, caressing voice thrilled my very heart. "I think," she continued, "that Mr. Ford looks very tired, Lance, pale and worn. We must take great care of him."

"That we will," was the hearty reply.

Great Heaven! was it a murderess standing there, with that sweet look of compassion on her beautiful face? Could this woman, who looked pitifully on me, a grown man, drown a little child in the deep sea? Were those lips, littering kindly words of welcome, the same that had cried in mad despair, "Oh, Heaven! if I dare—if I dare?" I could have killed myself for the base suspicion. Yet it was most surely she!

I stooped to pick up the white hawthorn she had dropped. She took it from me with the sweetest smile, and Lance stood by, looking on with an air of proud proprietorship that would have been amusing if it had not been so unutterably pitiful.

While my brain and mind were still chaos—a whirl of thought and emotion—the second dinner-bell rang. I offered her my arm, but I could not refrain from a shudder as her white hand touched it. When I saw that hand last it was most assuredly dropping the little burden into the sea. Lance looked at us most ruefully, so that she laughed and said:

"Come with us, Lance."

She laid her other hand on his arm, and we all three walked into the dining-room together.

I could not eat any dinner—I could only sit and watch the beautiful face. It was the face of a good woman—there was nothing cruel, nothing subtle in it. I must be mistaken. I felt as though I should go mad. She was a perfect hostess—most attentive—most graceful. I shall never forget her kindness to me any more than I shall forget the comeliness of her face or the gleam of her golden hair.

She thought I was not well. She did not know that it was fear which had blanched my face and made me tremble; she could not tell that it was horror which curdled my blood. Without any fuss—she was so anxiously considerate for me—without seeming to make any ceremony, she was so gracefully kind; she would not let me sit in the draughts; with her own hands she selected some purple grapes for me. This could never be the woman who had drowned a little child.

When dinner was over and we were in the drawing-room again, she drew a chair near the fire for me.

"You will laugh at the notion of a fire in May," she said; "but I find the early summer evenings chilly, and I cannot bear the cold."

I wondered if she thought of the chill of the water in which she had plunged the little child. I looked at her; there was not even a fleeting shadow on her face. Then she lingered for half a minute by my side.

As she drew near to me, I felt again that it was utterly impossible that my suspicions could be correct, and that I must be mistaken.

"I hope," she said, "you will not think what I am going to say strange. I know that it is the custom for some wives to be jealous of their husband's friends—some might be jealous of you. I want to tell you that I am not one of that kind. I love my husband so utterly, so entirely, that all whom he loves are dear to me. You are a brother, friend, everything to him—will you be the same to me?"

A beautiful woman asking, with those sweet, sensitive lips, for my friendship, looking at me with those calm, tender eyes, asking me to like her for her husband's sake—the sweetest, the most gracious, the most graceful picture I had ever seen. Yet, oh, Heaven! a murderess, if ever there was one! She wondered why I did not respond to her advances. I read the wonder in her face.

"You do not care for hasty friends," she said. "Well, Lance and I are one; if you like him, you must like me, and time will show."

"You are more than good to me," I stammered, thinking in my heart if she had been but half as good to the little helpless child she flung into the sea.

I have never seen a woman more charming—of more exquisite grace—of more perfect accomplishment—greater fascination of manner. She sang to us, and her voice was full of such sweet pathos it almost brought the tears in my eyes. I could not reconcile what I saw now with what I had seen on the Chain Pier, though outwardly the same woman I had seen on the Chain Pier and this graceful, gracious lady could not possibly be one. As the evening passed on, and I saw her bright, cheerful ways, her devotion to her husband, her candid, frank open manner, I came to the conclusion that I must be the victim either of a mania or of some terrible mistake. Was it possible, though, that I could have been? Had I not had the face clearly, distinctly, before me for the past three years?

One thing struck me during the evening. Watching her most narrowly, I could not see in her any under-current of feeling; she seemed to think what she said, and to say just what she thought; there were no musings, no reveries, no fits of abstraction, such as one would think would go always with sin or crime. Her attention was given always to what was passing; she was not in the least like a person with anything weighing on her mind. We were talking, Lance and I, of an old friend of ours, who had gone to Nice, and that led to a digression on the different watering places of England. Lance mentioned several, the climate of which he declared was unsurpassed—those mysterious places of which one reads in the papers, where violets grow in December, and the sun shines all the year round. I cannot remember who first named Brighton, but I do remember that she neither changed color nor shrank.

"Now for a test," I said to myself. I looked at her straight in the face, so that no expression of hers could escape me—no shadow pass over her eyes unknown to me.

"Do you know Brighton at all?" I asked her. I could see to the very depths of those limpid eyes. No shadow came; the beautiful, attentive face did not change in the least. She smiled as she replied:

"I do not. I know Bournemouth and Eastbourne very well; I like Bournemouth best."

We had hardly touched upon the subject, and she had glided from it, yet with such seeming unconsciousness. I laughed, yet, I felt that my lips were stiff and the sound of my voice strange.

"Every one knows Brighton," I said. "It is not often one meets an English lady who does not know it."

She looked at me with the most charming and frank directness.

"I spent a few hours there once," she said. "From the little I saw of it I took it for a city of palaces."

"It is a beautiful place," I said.

She rose