At last Schuyler Carleton, with an evident effort, said suddenly, “Oughtn’t we to send for Tom Willard?”

Mrs. Markham gave a start. “Of course we must,” she said. “Poor Tom! He must be told. Who will tell him?”

“I will,” volunteered Miss Morton, and Doctor Hills looked up, amazed at her calm tone. This woman puzzled him, and he could not understand her continued attempts at authority in a household where she was a comparative stranger. And yet might it not be merely a kind consideration for those who were nearer and dearer to the principals of this awful tragedy?But even as he thought this over, Miss Morton had gone to the telephone, her heavy silk gown rustling as she crossed the room, and her every movement assertive of her own importance. 

Calling up the Mapleton Inn, she succeeded, after several attempts, in rousing some of its occupants, and finally was in communication with young Willard himself. She did not tell him of the tragedy, but only asked him to come over to the house at once, as something serious had happened, and returned to her seat with a murmured observation that Tom would arrive as soon as possible. 

Again the little group lapsed into silence. Cicely Dupuy was very nervous, and kept picking at her handkerchief, quite unconscious that she was ruining its delicate lace edge. Doctor Hills glanced furtively from one to another. Many things puzzled him, but most of all he was at a loss to understand the suicide of this beautiful girl on the very eve of her wedding. 

At last Tom Willard came. Miss Morton met him at the door, and took him into the drawing-room before he could turn toward the library. 

Schuyler Carleton's frantic touches on various electric buttons had turned on all the lights in the drawing-room. As no one had noticed this, the great apartment had remained illuminated as if for a festivity, and the soft, bright lights fell on the floral bower and the elaborate decorations that had been arranged for the wedding day. 

"What is it?" asked Tom, his own face white with an impending sense of dread as he looked into Miss Morton's eyes. 

As gently as possible, but in her own straightforward and inevitably somewhat abrupt way, Miss Morton told him. 

"I want to warn you," she said, "to prepare for a shock, and I think it kinder to tell you the truth at once. Your cousin Madeleine—Miss Van Norman—has 

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