She wrote lest her courage and nerve should at the last moment fail her, as to my knowledge they had failed her before." "Before!" cried Millie.

"She had tried before! Oh, poor woman!" "Yes," said Hillyard, and he told them all of the vague but very real fear which had once driven him into Surrey in chase of her; of her bedroom with the bed unslept in and the lights still burning in the blaze of a summer morning; of herself sitting all night at her writing-table, making dashes and figures upon the notepaper and unable to steel herself to the last dreadful act.
Martin Hillyard gave no reason for her misery upon that occasion, nor did any one think to inquire.

He just told the story from his heart, and therefore with a great simplicity of words.

There was not one of those who heard him, but was moved.
"Yet there were perhaps a couple of hours in her life more grim and horrible than any in that long night," he went on, "the hours between ten o'clock and midnight yesterday." "Ah, but we don't know how they were spent," began Sir Chichester.
"We know something," returned Martin gravely.

"I told you that that letter was corroborated before the paragraph it contained was inserted in the paper." "Yes," said Lady Splay.
"Whilst they were waiting for the news from France, which did not come, they rang you up from the _Harpoon_ office.