"Very good. Now about her dress. Describe it as minutely as you can. It was a bride's traveling costume, I suppose."

"Yes. That is, I presume so. I know that it was all right and suitable to the occasion, but I don't remember much about it. I was thinking too much of the woman in the gown to notice the gown itself."

"Cannot you tell the color?"

"It was a dark one. I'm sure it was a dark one, but colors are not much in my line. I know she looked well—they can tell you about it at the house. All that I distinctly remember is the veil she had wound so tightly around her face and hat to keep the rice out of her hair that I could not get one glimpse of her features. All nonsense that veil, especially when I had promised not to address her or even to touch her in the cab. And she wore it into the office. If it had not been for that I might have foreseen her intention in time to prevent it."

"Perhaps she knew that."

"It looks as if she did."

"Which means that she was meditating flight from the first."

"From the time she saw that man," Mr. Ransom corrected.

"Just so; from the time she left her uncle's house. Your wife is a woman of means, I believe."

"Yes, unfortunately."