day was even set.

But that was all over now--ended as her life was ended: suddenly,
incomprehensibly, and by no stroke of God. Even the jewel on her finger
was gone, the token of our betrothal. This was to be expected. She would
be apt to take it off before committing herself to a fate that proclaimed
me a traitor to this symbol. I should see that ring again. I should find
it in a letter filled with bitter words. I would not think of it or of
them now. I would try to learn how she had committed this act, whether by
poison or--

It must have been by poison; no other means would suggest themselves to
one of her refined sense; but if so, why those marks on her neck, growing
darker and darker as I stared at them!

My senses reeled as I scrutinised those marks. Small, delicate but
deadly, they stared upon me from either side of her white neck till
nature could endure no more and I tottered back against the further wall,
beholding no longer room, nor lounge, nor recumbent body, but a young
girl's exquisite face, set in lines which belied her seventeen years, and
made futile any attempt on my part at self-deception when my reason
inexorably demanded an explanation of this death. As suicide it was
comprehensible, as murder, not, unless--

And it had been murder!

I sank to the floor as I fully realised this.