Your letter contained no particulars at all," and as the other made no immediate answer, Miss Crofton went on:--"I know there was an inquest, for one of my friends in Florence saw a report of it in an English paper.

Perhaps you would kindly let me see any newspaper account or cuttings you may have preserved ?" "I have kept _nothing_, Alice!" Enid Crofton uttered the words with a touch of almost angry excitement.

Then, perhaps seeing that the other was very much surprised, she said more quietly:--"The inquest was a purely formal affair--the Coroner himself told me that there must always be an inquest when a person died suddenly." "Oh, but surely the question was raised, and that very seriously, as to whether Cecil took what he did take on purpose, or by accident?
I understood from my friend that the account of the inquest she saw in some popular Sunday paper was headed 'An Essex Mystery.'" Enid felt as if all the blood in her body was flowing towards her face.
She congratulated herself that she was sitting with her back to the light.

These remarks, these questions made her feel sick and faint.

Yet she answered, composedly:--"Both the Coroner and the jury felt _sure_ he had taken it on purpose.