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28 ‘THE ROSE AND THE LILY.
you how those stains came there. They are Vernon
Clyde’s blood.”
Again an ominous whisper runs through the circle of
listeners. Maud glances around her fearfully. She
meets strange, averted glances from faces that have
~been wont to smile upon her before. A strange light
comes into her eyes.) , mers
' “ Oh, what do they mean?” she cries.. “ They do not
think, do they, that I killed Mr. Clyde? I tell you he
killed himself... He told me he would do so if I refused
to marry him.” poe a
“Tell us, how those blood-stains came upon your
dress,” the coroner answers, briefly and gravely. a
She clasps her hands and shivers through all her im:
perially perfect form, . -
“TY dd come back here last night,” she says, in a fear.
ful whisper. “ My uncle had discarded me. Mr. Char.
teris had married another, and I had no one to turn to
but the lover I had discarded a little while before. So
{ hurried back, thinking. I would be Clyde’s wife after
all, but when I came, he,”’ with a gasp, “he lay dead
before me. I had thought it but a mere idle threat to
frighten me, but he had kept his word faithfully. He
had shot himself through the heart.. I knelt' down be-
side him, and laid my hand on his breast, but it’ was
cold and still. Oh, you must not think I killed him! [
loved him, and I would have gone away with him, but I
was afraid of losing my uncle’s money,” she ends, with
a choking sob, .
- “ Why did you not raise an alarm when you found
him dead?” S
“I was afraid they would charge me with his murder,
so,I hurried away, not knowing of those tell-tale stains —
on my dress where I had been down on my knees beside
- him. I did not kill him, no, no, but my fatal weakness
drove him to take his own life.” . .
_ There is a moment's. perfect silence, then the voice of:
the coroner is heard, with a troubled cadence in its
sternness: .
~ “T regret my painful duty, Miss Langton, more than.
Ican say. Thehigh position you have always held in
this county would forbid the thought. of your crimin-
ality, but the evidence against vou is of sucha nature
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