“You have a message for me. Is it from headquarters? Or has the district attorney still more questions to ask?”
“I have a much more trying errand than that,” I hastened to say, with some idea of preparing her for an experience that could not fail to be one of exceptional trial. “For reasons which will be explained to you by those in greater authority than myself, you are wanted at the house where—” I could not help stammering under the light of her melancholy eyes—“where I saw you once before,” I lamely concluded.
“The house in Waverley Avenue?” she objected wildly, with the first signs of positive terror I had ever beheld in her.
I nodded, dropping my eyes. What call had I to penetrate the conscience of this woman?
“Are they there? all there?” she presently asked again. “The police and—and Mr. Jeffrey?”
“Madam,” I respectfully protested, “my duty is limited to conducting you to the place named. A carriage is waiting. May I beg that you will prepare yourself to go at once to Waverley Avenue?”
For answer she subjected me to a long and earnest look which I found it impossible to evade. Then she hastened from the room, but with very unsteady steps. Evidently the courage which had upborne her so long was beginning to fail. Her very countenance was changed. Had she recognized, as I meant she should, that the secret of the Moore house was no longer a secret confined to her own breast and to that of her unhappy brother-in-law?
When she returned ready for her ride this change in her spirits was less observable, and by the time we had reached the house in Waverley Avenue she had so far regained her old courage as to move and speak with the calmness of despair if not of mental serenity.
The major was awaiting us at the door and bowed gravely before her heavily veiled figure.
“Miss Tuttle,” he asked, without any preamble, the moment she was well inside the house, “may I inquire of you here, and before I show you what will excuse us for subjecting you to the distress of entering these doors, whether your sister, Mrs. Jeffrey, had any other name or was ever known by any other name than that of Veronica?”
“She was christened Antoinette, as well as Veronica; but the person in whose memory the former name was given her was no honor to the family and she very soon dropped it and was only known as Veronica. Oh, what have I done?” she cried, awed and frightened by the silence which followed the utterance of these simple words.