Barnard is so far. Oh,
I can't bear it! How could you, Helen?"
"Don't, Kitty," said Cadge, drawing her from the room.
The doctor motioned me to a table behind the screen of which Kitty had
spoken. There Helen had sat, there lay her writing case, the key sealed in
an envelope addressed to me. Picking up a slip of paper torn from a letter
pad, he asked:--
"Is this also Miss Winship's writing?"
He held it out to me and I read the single line:--
"Don't tell Father."
Dazed, half-comprehending, I repeated: "Yes."
Upton had found nothing else, except Helen's watch, open beside the
writing case, and a glass that still held a little sherry. At this he
looked with sombre intelligence and set it carefully aside.
Nothing in the room had been disturbed. Helen's chair had the look of
having been pushed from the table as she rose but a minute before. Near it
on an easel stood the Van Nostrand picture, smiling--smiling, as if it had
seen no tragedy. On the floor was a little ash as of charred paper.
In a few minutes Mrs. Reid and Kitty returned with Mr. Winship. Through
the fog that enveloped me I saw with dull curiosity that they had told him
something that he didn't understand.
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