Page:Alice Stuyvesant - The Vanity Box.djvu/127

 might have gone to the village, when in the end she didn't come home."

So it went on; question after question; answer after answer; pens scratching; notes going down on paper at the coroner's table, and journalists writing swiftly, perhaps some of them secretly sketching. But the worst was over. Terry felt that she had acquitted herself well; that if suspicion had been creeping into people's minds, she had perhaps been able to catch the ugly little snake by its tail, and crush it before it could grow to formidable size.

"I am glad — glad — glad," she said to herself, "if I have been able to help Ian."

She believed in him; believed him to be honourable as he was brave (though once long ago he had failed in highest honour to her); believed that he had adored his wife. And yet — Terry had grown in the last two days to hate these words "and yet."

She walked quietly and steadily back to her place beside Maud; but no sooner had she sat down than she began to feel sick and faint. The room whirled before her eyes. The coroner's table and the men seated on either side seemed to rise from the ground and float up toward the ceiling, in a bluish haze. Major Smedley's face turned into that of a Cheshire cat, with great cold eyes like enormous agates looking at her, staring at her.

If it had not been for those eyes and their stare she