Evidently her reason was unseated by the tragedy which threw so deep
a gloom over her wedding."
III
I REMAIN
Not for an instant did I doubt the correctness of this identification.
All the pictures I had seen of this well-known society belle had
been marked by an individuality of expression which fixed her face
in the memory and which I now saw repeated in the lifeless features
before me.
Greatly startled by the discovery, but quite convinced that this was
but the dreadful sequel of an already sufficiently dark tragedy, I
proceeded to take such steps as are common in these cases. Having
sent the too-willing Hibbard to notify headquarters, I was on the
point of making a memorandum of such details as seemed important,
when my lantern suddenly went out, leaving me in total darkness.
This was far from pleasant, but the effect it produced upon my mind
was not without its result. For no sooner did I find myself alone
and in the unrelieved darkness of this grave-like room, than I became
convinced that no woman, however frenzied, would make her plunge
into an unknown existence from the midst of a darkness only too
suggestive of the tomb to which she was hastening. It was not in
nature, not in woman's nature, at all events. Either she had
committed the final act before such daylight as could filter through
the shutters of this closed-up room had quite disappeared, - an
hypothesis instantly destroyed by the warmth which still lingered
in certain portions of her body, - or else the light which had been
burning when she pulled the fatal trigger had since been carried
elsewhere or extinguished.
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