Page:Watts Mumford--Whitewash.djvu/305

 then, has he?" Involuntarily her face shone with relief.

"He committed suicide. It was in all the papers yesterday." Mrs. Ford's back was turned toward Philippa. She did not see the ghastly pallor that spread over the girl's face. When she turned, her charge's head was buried in the pillows of the sofa, and she went on with her information. "You are the luckiest creature I ever heard of. To think of his having the decency to put himself out of the way. He turned on the gas after carefully blocking up all the chinks of his room, and, I suppose because he was afraid his nerve would fail him, he chloroformed himself when he lay down to die. It seems it happened in some cheap little French hotel over on Twenty-sixth Street, and it wasn't found out till early next morning, when the woman who had occupied the adjoining room left the house because she claimed the smell of gas was unendurable.

"After she'd paid her bill and gone, the waiter went up-stairs and found the halls positively as- 291