her smiles, the lift of her eyebrows were not fresh memories to
me. Some consideration was certainly due him for the shock he
must be laboring under. Yet I did not know how to keep back the
vital question.

"Who did it? You must have heard some one say."

"I have heard nothing," was his somewhat fierce rejoinder. Then,
as I made a move, "What you do not wish to follow the crowd
there?"

"I wish to find my uncle, and he is in that crowd."

Mr. Durand said nothing further, and together we passed down the
hall. A strange mood pervaded my mind. Instead of wishing to fly
a scene which under ordinary conditions would have filled me with
utter repugnance, I felt a desire to see and hear everything. Not
from curiosity, such as moved most of the people about me, but
because of some strong instinctive feeling I could not
understand; as if it were my heart which had been struck, and my
fate which was trembling in the balance.

We were consequently among the first to hear such further details
as were allowed to circulate among the now well-nigh frenzied
guests. No one knew the perpetrator of the deed nor did there
appear to be any direct evidence calculated to fix his identity.
Indeed, the sudden death of this beautiful woman in the midst of
festivity might have been looked upon as suicide, if the jewel
had not been missing from her breast and the instrument of death
removed from the wound. So far, the casual search which had been