"He committed a murder--" "Let ME take the basin!" I cried, for I saw Hilda's hands giving way a second time, and I was anxious to spare her.
"No, thank you," she answered low, but in a voice that was full of suppressed defiance.

"I will wait and hear this out.

I PREFER to stop here." As for Sebastian, he seemed now not to notice her, though I was aware all the time of a sidelong glance of his eye, parrot-wise, in her direction.

"He committed a murder," he went on, "by means of aconitine--then an almost unknown poison; and, after committing it, his heart being already weak, he was taken himself with symptoms of aneurism in a curious form, essentially similar to these; so that he died before the trial--a lucky escape for him." He paused rhetorically once more; then he added in the same tone: "Mental agitation and the terror of detection no doubt accelerated the fatal result in that instance.

He died at once from the shock of the arrest.