“You have been there and know what the place is, but no one but myself can ever realize what it was for me, still loving, still clinging to a wild inconsequent belief in my wife, to grope in that mouth of hell for the spring she had chattered about in her sleep, to find it, press it, and then to hear, down in the dark of the fearsome recess, the sound of something deadly strike against what I took to be the cushions of the old settle standing at the edge of the library hearthstone.
“I think I must have fainted. For when I found myself possessed of sufficient consciousness to withdraw from that hole of death, the candle in the candelabrum was shorter by an inch than when I first thrust my head into the gap made by the removed drawers. In putting back the drawers I hit the candelabrum with my foot, upsetting it and throwing out the burning candle. As the flames began to lick the worm-eaten boarding of the floor a momentary impulse seized me to rush away and leave the whole place to burn. But I did not. With a sudden frenzy, I stamped out the flame, and then finding myself in darkness, groped my way downstairs and out. If I entered the library I do not remember it. Some lapses must be pardoned a man involved as I was.”
“But the fact which you dismiss so lightly is an important one,” insisted the major. “We must know positively whether you entered this room or not.”
“Then you can not tell us whether the little table was standing there, with the candelabrum upon it or—”
The major, after a long look at this suffering man, turned toward Miss Tuttle.
“You must have loved your sister very much,” he sententiously remarked.
She flushed and for the first time her eyes fell from their resting-place on Mr. Jeffrey’s face.
“I loved her reputation,” was her quiet answer, “and—” The rest died in her throat.
But we all—such of us, I mean, who were possessed of the least sensibility or insight, knew how that sentence sounded as finished in her heart “and I loved _him_ who asked this sacrifice of me.”
“And to save that reputation you tied the pistol to her wrist?” insinuated the major.
“No,” was her vehement reply. “I never knew what I was tying to her. My testimony in that regard was absolutely true. She held the pistol concealed in the folds of her dress. I did not dream—I could not—that she was contemplating any such end to the atrocious crime—to which she had confessed. Her manner was too light, too airy and too frivolous—a manner adopted, as I now see, to forestall all questions and hold back all expressions of feeling on my part. ‘Tie these hanging ends of ribbon to my wrist,’ were her words. ‘Tie them tight; a knot under and a bow on top. I am going out— There, don’t say anything— What you want to talk about will keep till tomorrow. For one night more I am going to make merry—to—to enjoy myself.’ She was laughing. I thought her horribly callous and trembled with such an unspeakable repulsion that I had difficulty in making the knot. To speak at all would have been impossible. Neither did I dare to look in her face. I was touching the hand and _she_ kept on laughing—such a hollow laugh covering up such an awful resolve! When she turned to give me that last injunction about the note, this resolve glared still in her eyes.”