chenille fringes will come to pieces, it had become detached and fallen where she had stood at that spot beside the victim's bed.

There was a smear of blood upon it.

I recollected her strangely nervous manner, her anxiety to ascertain what clue we had discovered and to know the opinion of the police. Yes, if guilt were ever written upon a woman's face, it was upon hers.

Should I show the tiny fragment to my friend? Should I put it into his hands and tell him the bitter truth—the truth that I believed my love to be a murderess?

CHAPTER IX. SHADOWS.

The revelation held me utterly dumfounded. Already I had, by placing my hand in contact with the shawl, ascertained its exact texture, and saw that both its tint and its fabric were unquestionably the same as the knotted fragment I held in my hand. Chenille shawls, as every woman knows, must be handled carefully or the lightly-made fringe will come asunder; for the kind of cord of floss silk is generally made upon a single thread, which will break with the slightest strain.

By some means the shawl in question had accidentally become entangled—or perhaps been strained by the sudden uplifting of the arm of the wearer. In any case the little innocent-looking fragment had snapped, and dropped at the bedside of the murdered man.

The grave suspicions of Ethelwynn which I had held on the previous night when she endeavoured to justify her sister's neglect again crowded upon me, and Sir Bernard's hint at the secret of her past thrust the iron deeply into my heart.

My eyes were fixed upon the little object in my palm—the silent but damning evidence—and my mind became filled by bitterest regrets. I saw how cleverly I had been duped—I recognised that this woman, whom I thought an angel, was only a cunning assassin.

No, believe me: I was not prejudging her! The thought had already occurred to me that she might have entered the room wearing that shawl perhaps to wish the invalid good-night. She had, however, in answer to my question, declared that she had retired to bed without seeing him—for Nurse Kate had told her that he was sleeping. She had therefore not disturbed him.

Then, yet another thought had occurred to me. She might have worn the shawl when she entered after the raising of the alarm. In order to clear up that point I had questioned the servants, one by one, and 

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