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quick gestures he snatched it up and read it to himself, while a look of great surprise dawned on his face. Immediately he read it aloud:
    I am wholly miserable, and unless the clouds lift I must end my life. I love S., but he does not love me.
    After he finished reading, Doctor Hills stood staring at the paper, and looked utterly perplexed.
    â€œI should have said it was not a suicide,” he declared, “but this message seems to indicate that it is. Is this written in Miss Van Norman’s hand?”
    Miss Morton, who stood at the doctor’s side, took the paper and scrutinized it.
    â€œIt is,” she said. “Yes, certainly that is Miss Van Norman’s writing. I had a letter from her only a few days ago, and I recognize it perfectly.”
    â€œLet me see it,” said Mrs. Markham, in a determined, though rather timid way. “I am more
    familiar with Madeleine’s writing than a stranger can possibly be.”
    Miss Morton handed the paper to the housekeeper without a word, while the doctor, waiting, wondered why these two women seemed so out of sympathy with each other.
    â€œYes, it is surely Madeleine’s writing,” agreed Mrs. Markham, her glasses dropping off as her eyes filled with tears.
    â€œThen I suppose she killed herself, poor girl,” said the doctor. “She must have been desperate, indeed, for it was a strong blow that drove the steel in so deeply. Who first discovered her here?”
    â€œI did,” said Schuyler Carleton, stepping forward. His face was almost as white as the dead girl’s, and he was scarcely able to make his voice heard. “I came in with a latch-key, and found her here, just as you see her now.”
    As Carleton spoke Cicely Dupuy stared at him with that curious expression that seemed to show something more than grief and horror. Her emotional bewilderment was not surprising in view of the awful situation, but her look was a strange one, and for some reason it greatly disconcerted the man.
    None of this escaped the notice of Doctor Hills. Looking straight at Carleton, but with a kindly expression replacing the stern look on his face, he went on:
    â€œAnd when you came in, was Miss Van Norman just as we see her now?”
    â€œPractically,” said Carleton. “I couldn’t believe her dead. And I tried to rouse her. Then I saw the dagger on the floor at her feet.”
    â€œOn the floor?” interrupted Doctor Hills.
    â€œYes,” replied Carleton, whose agitation was increasing, and who had sunk into a chair because of sheer inability to stand. “It was on the floor at her feet—right at her feet. I picked it up, and there was blood on it—there is blood on it—and I laid it on the table. And then I saw the paper—the paper that says she killed herself. And then—and then I turned on the lights and rang the servants’ bells, and Cicely—Miss Dupuy—came, and the others, and—that’s all.”
    Schuyler Carleton had with difficulty concluded his narration, and he sat clenching his hands and biting his lips as if at the very limit of his powers of endurance.
    Doctor Hills again glanced round the assembly in that quick way of his, and said:
    â€œDid any of you have reason to think Miss Van Norman had any thought of taking her own life?”
    For a moment no one spoke, and then Kitty French, who, in a despairing, miserable way, was huddled in the depths of a great arm-chair, said:
    â€œI have heard Madeleine say that some time she would kill herself with that horrid old dagger. I wish I had stolen it and buried it long ago!”
    Doctor Hills turned to Mrs. Markham. “Did you have any reason to fear this?” he inquired.
    â€œNo,” she replied; “and I do not think Madeleine meant she would voluntarily use that dagger. She only meant she had a superstitious dread of the thing.”
    â€œDo you understand her reference to her own unhappiness in