Viola stopped as though she herself feared the words she was about to utter. Dr. Lambert quickly spoke.
“There has been no disgrace, my dear Viola,” he said, gently. “We have just come from the—from having made an investigation—Dr. Baird and myself and Dr. Rowland. We discovered that your father was poisoned, and—”
“Poisoned?” she gasped, and started back as though struck, while her rapid glances went from face to face, resting longest on the countenance of Captain Poland. It was as though, in this great emergency, she looked to him for comfort more than to the old doctor who had ushered her into the world.
“I am sorry to have to say it, Viola, but such is the case,” went on the family physician. “Your father was poisoned. But the kind of poison we have not yet determined.”
“But who gave it to him?” she cried. “Oh, it doesn't seem that any one would hate him so, not even his worst enemy. And he had so many friends-too many, perhaps.”
“We don't know that any one gave him the poison, Viola,” said Dr. Lambert, gently. “In fact, it does not seem that any one did, or your father would have known it. Certainly if any one had tried to make him take poison there would have been a struggle that he would have mentioned. But he died of poison, nevertheless.”
“Then there can be but one other explanation,” she murmured, and her voice was tense and strained. “He must have—”
“We fear he took it himself,” blurted out Dr. Baird, in spite of the warning look cast at him by his colleague.
“Oh, I won't believe that! It can't be true!” cried Viola, and she burst into a storm of sobs. Dr. Lambert placed his arms about her.
“Tell me it isn't true, Uncle Add! Tell me it isn't true!” she sobbed.