"Yes, first."
"Miss Dare, had you been in the street long? Were you in it at the time the murder happened, do you think?"
"I in the street?"
"Yes," he repeated, conscious from the sudden strange alteration in her look that he had touched upon a point which, to her, was vital with some undefined interest, possibly that to which the surmises of Hickory had supplied a clue. "Were you in the street, or anywhere out-of-doors at the time the murder occurred? It strikes me that it would be well for me to know."
"Sir," she cried, rising in her sudden indignation, "I thought the time for questions had passed. What means this sudden inquiry into a matter we have all considered exhausted, certainly as far as I am concerned."
"Shall I show you?" he cried, taking her by the hand and leading her toward the mirror near by, under one of those impulses which sometimes effect so much. "Look in there at your own face and you will see why I press this question upon you."
Astonished, if not awed, she followed with her eyes the direction of his pointing finger, and anxiously surveyed her own image in the glass. Then, with a quick movement, her hands went up before her face—which till that moment had kept its counsel so well—and, tottering back against a table, she stood for a moment communing with herself, and possibly summoning up her courage for the conflict she evidently saw before her.
"What is it you wish to know?" she faintly inquired, after a long period of suspense and doubt.
"Where were you when the clock struck twelve on the day Mrs. Clemmens was murdered?"
Instantly dropping her hands, she turned toward him with a sudden lift of her majestic figure that was as imposing as it was unexpected.