Instead of growing perturbed or openly
depressed she bloomed into greater beauty and confronted with
steadier eye, not us, but the men she instinctively faced as the
tide of her fortunes began to lower. Did the coroner perceive this
and recognize at last both the measure of her attractions and the
power they were likely to carry with them? Perhaps, for his voice
took an acrid note as he declared:
"You had another errand in that room?"
She let her head droop just a trifle.
"Alas!" she murmured.
"You went to the book-shelves and took out a book with a peculiar
cover, a cover which Mr. Jeffrey has already recognized as that of
the book in which he found a certain note."
"You have said it," she faltered.
"Did you take such a book out?"
"I did."
"For what purpose, Miss Tuttle?"
She had meant to answer quickly. But some consideration made her
hesitate and the words were long in coming; when she did speak, it
was to say:
"My sister asked another favor of me after I had tied the ribbon.
Pausing in her passage to the door, she informed me in a tone quite
in keeping with her whole manner, that she had left a note for her
husband in the book they were reading together. Her reason for
doing this, she said, was the very natural one of wishing him to
come upon it by chance, but as she had placed it in the front of
the book instead of in the back where they were reading, she was
afraid that he would fail to find it.
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