“With a paper in her hand?”
“Paper?” and she wheeled suddenly and looked at her cousin. “Did you have a paper, Eleanore?”
The moment was intense. Eleanore Leavenworth, who at the first mention of the word paper had started perceptibly, rose to her feet at this naive appeal, and opening her lips, seemed about to speak, when the coroner, with a strict sense of what was regular, lifted his hand with decision, and said:
“You need not ask your cousin, Miss; but let us hear what you have to say yourself.”
Immediately, Eleanore Leavenworth sank back, a pink spot breaking out on either cheek; while a slight murmur testified to the disappointment of those in the room, who were more anxious to have their curiosity gratified than the forms of law adhered to.
Satisfied with having done his duty, and disposed to be easy with so charming a witness, the coroner repeated his question. “Tell us, if you please, if you saw any such thing in her hand?”
“I? Oh, no, no; I saw nothing.”
Being now questioned in relation to the events of the previous night, she had no new light to throw upon the subject. She acknowledged her uncle to have been a little reserved at dinner, but no more so than at previous times when annoyed by some business anxiety.
Asked if she had seen her uncle again that evening, she said no, that she had been detained in her room. That the sight of him, sitting in his seat at the head of the table, was the very last remembrance she had of him.
There was something so touching, so forlorn, and yet so unobtrusive, in this simple recollection of hers, that a look of sympathy passed slowly around the room.