That is the way it must have happened," Hillyard concluded energetically.

"For it's the only way it could have happened." Luttrell, though he had been a listener and nothing else throughout Martin's statement, had cherished a hope that somehow it might be discovered that Stella had died by an accident.

That she should die by her own hand, in this house, under the same roof as Joan, and because of one year which had ended at Stockholm--oh, to him a generation back!--was an idea of irrepressible horror.

He could not shake off some sense of guiltiness.

He had argued with it all that day, discovering the most excellent contentions, but at the end, not one of them had succeeded in weakening in the least degree his inward conviction that he had his share in Stella's death.