It was generous of her and will
do much toward making my memory of her a gentle one."
He was forgetting himself again. Indeed, his manner and attempted
explanations were full of contradictions. To emphasize this fact
Coroner Z. exclaimed
"I should think so! She paid a heavy penalty for her professed
lack of love. You believe that her mind was unseated?"
"Does not her action show it?"
"Unseated by the mishap occurring at her marriage?"
"Yes."
"You really think that?"
"Yes."
"By anything that passed between you?"
"Yes."
"May I ask you to tell us what passed between you on this point?"
"Yes."
He had uttered the monosyllable so often it seemed to come
unconsciously from his lips. But he recognized almost as soon as
we did that it was not a natural reply to the last question, and,
making a gesture of apology, he added, with the same monotony of
tone which had characterized these replies:
"She spoke of her strange guest's unaccountable death more than
once, and whenever she did so, it was with an unnatural excitement
and in an unbalanced way. This was so noticeable to us all that
the subject presently was tabooed amongst us; but though she
henceforth spared us all allusion to it, she continued to talk
about the house itself and of the previous deaths which had occurred
there till we were forced to forbid that topic also.
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