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Rh Later the humility of Nora's interest amused Garth. He told her frankly how the pivotal pieces of the puzzle had been within reach long before Reed had tried in Mrs. Taylor's service to recover and destroy the tell-tale black gown.

"Those sedatives in Taylor's bathroom," he said. "The man's perpetual questioning of his doctor about the symptoms and the treatment of insanity, the moans which frightened the other servants without affecting McDonald or his daughter, the old lady's exaggeration of her eccentricities to draw my attention from Mrs. Taylor—any of these clues ought to have reminded us, Nora, of the hundreds of similar cases in New York of fond relatives who, through a mistaken pride, hide and treat in their own homes such cases of mental disorder."

He scarcely needed to outline for her the picture, filled in by the old lady, of that black hour last night in the melancholy house, when Mrs. Taylor had tricked McDonald's daughter—a competent trained nurse—had escaped from the attic sick-room, and had got the revolver. Garth saw that Nora, too, could fancy Taylor's panic and self-reproach as he lay sick and helpless in bed, knowing his wife was free, foreseeing inevitably much the sort of thing that had happened, trying when it was too late to confess his mistake, to warn the authorities that his wife was at large and, possibly, dangerous.

"But she didn't give him time to write enough,"