But this expression was soon changed for the alert look of one who dreads to see a certain face start up from some unknown quarter. Glancing up and down the street, peering furtively into doorways as we passed, starting and trembling if a sudden figure appeared on the curbstone, she did not seem to breathe with perfect ease till we had left the avenue behind us and entered upon Thirty-seventh Street. Then, all at once her natural color returned and, leaning gently toward me, she asked if I had a pencil and piece of paper I could give her. I fortunately possessed both. Handing them to her, I watched her with some little curiosity while she wrote two or three lines, wondering she could choose such a time and place for the purpose.
“A little note I wish to send,” she explained, glancing at the almost illegible scrawl with an expression of doubt. “Couldn’t you stop the carriage a moment while I direct it?”
I did so, and in another instant the leaf which I had torn from my note-book was folded, directed, and sealed with a stamp which she had taken from her own pocketbook.
“That is a crazy-looking epistle,” she muttered, as she laid it, direction downwards, in her lap.
“Why not wait, then, till you arrive at your destination, where you can seal it properly, and direct it at your leisure?”
“Because I am in haste. I wish to mail it now. Look, there is a box on the corner; please ask the driver to stop once more.”
“Shall I not post it for you?” I asked, holding out my hand.
But she shook her head, and, without waiting for my assistance, opened the door on her own side of the carriage and leaped to the ground. Even then she paused to glance up and down the street, before venturing to drop her hastily written letter into the box. But when it had left her hand, she looked brighter and more hopeful than I had yet seen her. And when, a few moments later, she turned to bid me good-by in front of her friend’s house, it was with almost a cheerful air she put out her hand and entreated me to call on her the next day, and inform her how the inquest progressed.
I shall not attempt to disguise from you the fact that I spent all that long evening in going over the testimony given at the inquest, endeavoring to reconcile what I had heard with any other theory than that of Eleanore’s guilt. Taking a piece of paper, I jotted down the leading causes of suspicion as follows:
1. Her late disagreement with her uncle, and evident estrangement from him, as testified to by Mr. Harwell.