Chapter XXXVII.
Quietly the doctors filed into the room, and one of them turned the key in the door.
It was Dr. Crandall who undertook the delicate task of unmasking the suspected would-be murderess.
"I will tell you," he said, slowly. "The poor girl on the couch beside which you have often knelt is dying of slow poison, administered to her by some person beneath this roof."
Dorothy sprang from her chair and reeled backward, looking at him with widely dilated eyes. She never knew how it happened, but in that instant of time a terrible thought came to her. Could Jack Garner be guilty of administering it to her, to free himself from the bonds he so cruelly hated?
Oh, God! how the thought tortured her. She would not—she could not believe it.
"Some one under this roof has been guilty of this most atrocious act," continued the doctor, in a stern voice. "We suspect—we know the guilty party, and that party is in this very room!"
Dorothy clasped her hands in dumb agony, and her terrified eyes never left the form of him who had once been her lover.
"You do not answer me, Mrs. Brown," said the doctor, frowning. "What have you to say?"
"What could I say?" she sobbed, piteously.