“It is wasted time, Mr. Carter. Ethel knew no one in New York, nor had relations with any one who would do such a thing.”
“Could any one have followed her from Philadelphia?”
“No,” said Mrs. Constant, earnestly. “Ethel was a good girl; she had no secrets apart from me, and no man had entered into her life in any way. She lived a very quiet life at home, and if there had been any love affair of hers or any one persecuting her, I should have known it. My secrets were hers and hers were mine.”
“It was not you, then,” asked Nick, “who came to me with that package last night?”
“No. I was detained at home by a caller, and as Ethel was going over to a dressmaker’s in Sixth Avenue, I asked her to take that package to you first.”
“What time did she leave here to go?”
“It must have been nearly eight o’clock. We were going out last evening, but the dress Ethel was to wear had not been sent home as promised, and Ethel wanted to go for it.”
“When she gave me that package,” said Nick, “she said she was much hurried. But all the time I thought it was you.”
“Yes, the resemblance between us was so great that all our lives we have been mistaken for each other, even by intimate friends. This resemblance is the cause of the announcement in the papers this morning that it was I who had been killed.”
“There was no one in the carriage with her when I saw her,” said Nick.