"Well," she said, "what of it? I daresay there are a good many shops where they sell them."
"The man who keeps this particular shop, said, I believe, that he sold one on the twenty-third of December to a young woman thickly veiled, rather tall and with wavy red hair."
"Her hair isn't red," said Mrs. Bobby, quickly.
"Some people call it so, you know," said Bobby. She was silent.
"Hundreds of women have that sort of hair," she said, presently. "Half the actresses in town"—
"He said it seemed to him natural."
"How should he know?" said Mrs. Bobby, contemptuously. "And why on earth should she choose a place like Brooklyn? I don't think she ever went there in her life."
"She seems," said Bobby, gently, "to have done a great many things that you—didn't think of, Eleanor." And again his wife fell silent.
"Have they any other evidence?" she asked, after thinking a moment, "or what they call evidence? I might as well know the worst."
"They have her letters, which were found among Halleck's papers—she told him to burn them, but he didn't. They were signed 'E. V. V.' One of them was about her engagement to Gerard—it seemed he had threatened her, and she offered him money to keep him quiet; the other was just a line, asking him to meet her in the Park. It's evident that she was afraid of him and had to keep him supplied with funds. She sold all her jewelry, they say, to do it."