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Rh Mrs. Barnes, "to have to tell you this, but if you insist upon knowing, it was I who killed your husband."

Louise fell back into her chair and covered her face with her hands. The Baroness looked shocked but not surprised. Wrayson, dumb and unnerved, had staggered back, and was leaning against the table. Mrs. Barnes had already taken a step towards the door. She was very pale, but her eyes were ablaze. Incredulity struggled with her passionate desire for vengeance.

"You!" she exclaimed. "What should you want to kill him for?"

The Colonel sighed regretfully.

"My dear young lady," he said, "it is very painful for me to have to be so explicit, but the situation demands it. I killed him because he was unfit to live—because he was a blackmailer of women, an unclean liver, a foul thing upon the face of the earth."

"It's a damned lie!" the girl hissed. "He was good to me, and you shall swing for it!"

The Colonel looked genuinely distressed.

"I am afraid," he said, "that you are prejudiced. If he was, as you say, kind to you, it was for his own pleasure. Believe me, I made a careful study of his character before I decided that he must go."

She looked at him with fierce curiosity.

"Are you a god," she demanded, "that you should have power of life or death? Who are you to set yourself up as a judge?"

"Pray do not believe," he begged, "that I arrogate to myself any such position. Only, unfortunately, as regards your late husband's character there could be no mistake, and concerning such men as he I have very strong convictions."