A LITTLE interval of solitude was a relief to me, as well as toMiserrimus Dexter.

Startling doubts beset me as I walked restlessly backward andforward, now in the anteroom, and now in the corridor outside. Itwas plain that I had (quite innocently) disturbed the repose ofsome formidable secrets in Miserrimus Dexter's mind. I confusedand wearied my poor brains in trying to guess what the secretsmight be. All my ingenuity--as after-events showed me--was wastedon speculations not one of which even approached the truth. I wason surer ground when I arrived at the conclusion that Dexter hadreally kept every mortal creature out of his confidence. He couldnever have betrayed such serious signs of disturbance as I hadnoticed in him, if he had publicly acknowledged at the Trial, orif he had privately communicated to any chosen friend, all thathe knew of the tragic and terrible drama acted in the bedchamberat Gleninch. What powerful influence had induced him to close hislips? Had he been silent in mercy to others? or in dread ofconsequences to himself? Impossible to tell! Could I hope that hewould confide to Me what he had kept secret from Justice andFriendship alike? When he knew what I really wanted of him, wouldhe arm me, out of his own stores of knowledge, with the weaponthat would win me victory in the struggle to come? The chanceswere against it--there was no denying that. Still the end wasworth trying for. The caprice of the moment might yet stand myfriend, with such a wayward being as Miserrimus Dexter. My plansand projects were sufficiently strange, sufficiently wide of theordinary limits of a woman's thoughts and actions, to attract hissympathies. "Who knows," I thought to myself, "if I may not takehis confidence by surprise, by simply telling him the truth?"

The interval expired; the door was thrown open; the voice of myhost summoned me again to the inner room.

"Welcome back!" said Miserrimus Dexter.

"Dear Mrs. Valeria, I am quite myself again. How are you?"

He looked and spoke with the easy cordiality of an old friend.During the period of my absence, short as it was, another changehad passed over this most multiform of living beings. His eyessparkled with good-humor; his cheeks were flushing under a newexcitement of some sort. Even his dress had undergone alterationsince I had seen it last. He now wore an extemporized cap ofwhite paper; his ruffles were tucked up; a clean apron was thrownover the sea-green coverlet. He hacked his chair before me,bowing and smiling, and waved me to a seat with the grace of adancing master, chastened by the dignity of a lord in waiting.

"I am going to cook," he announced, with the most engagingsimplicity. "We both stand in need of refreshment before wereturn to the serious business of our interview. You see me in mycook's dress; forgive it. There is a form in these things. I am agreat stickler for forms. I have been taking some wine. Pleasesanction that proceeding by taking some wine too."

He filled a goblet of ancient Venetian glass with a purple-redliquor, beautiful to see.

"Burgundy!" he said--"the king of wine: And this is the king ofBurgundies--Clos Vougeot. I drink to your health and happiness!"

He filled a second goblet for himself, and honored the toast bydraining it to the bottom. I now understood the sparkle in hiseyes and the flush in his cheeks. It was my interest not tooffend him. I drank a little of his wine, and I quite agreed withhim. I thought it delicious.

"What shall we eat?" he asked. "It must be something worthy ofour Clos Vougeot. Ariel is good at roasting and boiling joints,poor wretch! but I don't insult your taste by offering youAriel's cookery. Plain joints!" he exclaimed, with an expressionof refined disgust. "Bah! A man who eats a plain joint is onlyone remove from a cannibal or a butcher. Will you leave it to meto discover something more worthy of us? Let us go to thekitchen."

He wheeled his chair around, and invited me to accompany him witha courteous wave of his hand.

I followed the chair to some closed curtains at one end of theroom, which I had not hitherto noticed. Drawing aside thecurtains, he revealed to view an alcove, in which stood a neatlittle gas-stove for cooking. Drawers and cupboards, plates,dishes, and saucepans, were ranged around the alcove--all on aminiature scale, all scrupulously bright and clean. "Welcome tothe kitchen!" said Miserrimus Dexter. He drew out of a recess inthe wall a marble slab, which served as a table, and reflectedprofoundly, with his hand to his head. "I have it!" he cried, andopening one of the cupboards next, took from it a black bottle ofa form that was new to me. Sounding this bottle with a spike, hepierced and produced to view some little irregularly formed blackobjects, which might have been familiar enough to a womanaccustomed to the luxurious tables of the rich, but which were anew revelation to a person like myself, whohad led a simple country life in the house of a clergyman withsmall means. When I saw my host carefully lay out these occultsubstances of uninviting appearance on a clean napkin, and thenplunge once more into profound reflection at the sight of them,my curiosity could be no longer restrained. I ventured to say,"What are those things, Mr. Dexter, and are we really going toeat them?"

He started at the rash question, and looked at me with handsoutspread in irrepressible astonishment.

"Where is our boasted progress?" he cried. What is education buta name? Here is a cultivated person who doesn't know Truffleswhen she sees them!"

"I have heard of truffles," I answered, humbly, "but I never sawthem before. We had no such foreign luxuries as those, Mr.Dexter, at home in the North."

Miserrimus Dexter lifted one of the truffles tenderly on hisspike, and held it up to me in a favorable light.

"Make the most of one of the few first sensations in this lifewhich has no ingredient of disappointment lurking under thesurface," he said. "Look at it; meditate over it. You shall eatit, Mrs. Valeria, stewed in Burgundy!"

He lighted the gas for cooking with the air of a man who wasabout to offer me an inestimable proof of his good-will.

"Forgive me if I observe the most absolute silence," he said,"dating from the moment when I take this in my hand." He produceda bright little stew-pan from his collection of culinary utensilsas he spoke. "Properly pursued, the Art of Cookery allows of nodivided attention," he continued, gravely. "In that observationyou will find the reason why no woman ever has reached, or everwill reach, the highest distinction as a cook. As a rule, womenare incapable of absolutely concentrating their attention on anyone occupation for any given time. Their minds will run onsomething else--say; typically, for the sake of illustration,their sweetheart or their new bonnet. The one obstacle, Mrs.Valeria, to your rising equal to the men in the variousindustrial processes of life is not raised, as the women vainlysuppose, by the defective institutions of the age they live in.No! the obstacle is in themselves. No institutions that can bedevised to encourage them will ever be strong enough to contendsuccessfully with the sweetheart and the new bonnet. A littlewhile ago, for instance, I was instrumental in getting womenemployed in our local post-office here. The other day I took thetrouble--a serious business to me--of getting downstairs, andwheeling myself away to the office to see how they were gettingon. I took a letter with me to register. It had an unusually longaddress. The registering woman began copying the address on thereceipt form, in a business-like manner cheering and delightfulto see. Half way through, a little child-sister of one of theother women employed trotted into the office, and popped underthe counter to go and speak to her relative. The registeringwoman's mind instantly gave way. Her pencil stopped; her eyeswandered off to the child with a charming expression of interest.'Well, Lucy,' she said, 'how d'ye do?' Then she rememberedbusiness again, and returned to her receipt. When I took itacross the counter, an important line in the address of my letterwas left out in the copy. Thanks to Lucy. Now a man in the sameposition would not have seen Lucy--he would have been too closelyoccupied with what he was about at the moment. There is the wholedifference between the mental constitution of the sexes, which nolegislation will ever alter as long as the world lasts! What doesit matter? Women are infinitely superior to men in the moralqualities which are the true adornments of humanity. Becontent--oh, my mistaken sisters, be content with that!"

He twisted his chair around toward the stove. It was useless todispute the question with him, even if I had felt inclined to doso. He absorbed himself in his stew-pan.

I looked about me in the room.

The same insatiable relish for horrors exhibited downstairs bythe pictures in the hall was displayed again here. Thephotographs hanging on the wall represented the various forms ofmadness taken from the life. The plaster casts ranged on theshelf opposite were casts (after death) of the heads of famousmurderers. A frightful little skeleton of a woman hung in acupboard, behind a glazed door, with this cynical inscriptionplaced above the skull: "Behold the scaffolding on which beautyis built!" In a corresponding cupboard, with the door wide open,there hung in loose folds a shirt (as I took it to be) of chamoisleather. Touching it (and finding it to be far softer than anychamois leather that my fingers had ever felt before), Idisarranged the folds, and disclosed a ticket pinned among them,describing the thing in these horrid lines: "Skin of a FrenchMarquis, tanned in the Revolution of Ninety-three. Who says thenobility are not good for something? They make good leather."

After this last specimen of my host's taste in curiosities, Ipursued my investigation no further. I returned to my chair, andwaited for the truffles.

After a brief interval, the voice of thepoet-painter-composer-and-cook summoned me back to the alcove.

The gas was out. The stew-pan and its accompaniments hadvanished. On the marble slab were two plates, two napkins, tworolls of bread, and a dish, with another napkin in it, on whichreposed two quaint little black balls. Miserrimus Dexter,regarding me with a smile of benevolent interest, put one of theballs on my plate, and took the other himself. "Compose yourself,Mrs. Valeria," he said. "This is an epoch in your life. Yourfirst Truffle! Don't touch it with the knife. Use the fork alone.And--pardon me; this is most important--eat slowly."

I followed my instructions, and assumed an enthusiasm which Ihonestly confess I did not feel. I privately thought the newvegetable a great deal too rich, and in other respects quiteunworthy of the fuss that had been made about it. MiserrimusDexter lingered and languished over his truffles, and sipped hiswonderful Burgundy, and sang his own praises as a cook until Iwas really almost mad with impatience to return to the realobject of my visit. In the reckless state of mind which thisfeeling produced, I abruptly reminded my host that he was wastingour time, by the most dangerous question that I could possiblyput to him.

"Mr. Dexter," I said, "have you seen anything lately of Mrs.Beauly?"

The easy sense of enjoyment expressed in his face left it atthose rash words, and went out like a suddenly extinguishedlight. That furtive distrust of me which I had already noticedinstantly made itself felt again in his manner and in his voice.

"Do you know Mrs. Beauly?" he asked.

"I only know her," I answered, "by what I have read of her in theTrial."

He was not satisfied with that reply.

"You must have an interest of some sort in Mrs. Beauly," he said,"or you would not have asked me about her. Is it the interest ofa friend, or the interest of an enemy?"

Rash as I might be, I was not quite reckless enough yet to meetthat plain question by an equally plain reply. I saw enough inhis face to warn me to be careful with him before it was toolate.

"I can only answer you in one way," I rejoined. "I must return toa subject which is very painful to you--the subject of theTrial."

"Go on," he said, with one of his grim outbursts of humor. "HereI am at your mercy--a martyr at the stake. Poke the fire! pokethe fire!"

"I am only an ignorant woman," I resumed, "and I dare say I amquite wrong; but there is one part of my husband's trial whichdoesn't at all satisfy me. The defense set up for him seems to meto have been a complete mistake."

"A complete mistake?" he repeated. "Strange language, Mrs.Valeria, to say the least of it!" He tried to speak lightly; hetook up his goblet of wine; but I could see that I had producedan effect on him. His hand trembled as it carried the wine to hislips.

"I don't doubt that Eustace's first wife really asked him to buythe arsenic," I continued. "I don't doubt that she used itsecretly to improve her complexion. But w hat I do _not_ believeis that she died of an overdose of the poison, taken by mistake."

He put back the goblet of wine on the table near him sounsteadily that he spilled the greater part of it. For a momenthis eyes met mine, then looked down again.

"How do you believe she died?" he inquired, in tones so low thatI could barely hear them.

"By the hand of a poisoner," I answered.

He made a movement as if he were about to start up in the chair,and sank back again, seized, apparently, with a sudden faintness.

"Not my husband!" I hastened to add. "You know that I amsatisfied of _his_ innocence."

I saw him shudder. I saw his hands fasten their hold convulsivelyon the arms of his chair.

"Who poisoned her?" he asked, still lying helplessly back in thechair.

At the critical moment my courage failed me. I was afraid to tellhim in what direction my suspicions pointed.

"Can't you guess?" I said.

There was a pause. I supposed him to be seceretly following hisown train of thought. It was not for long. On a sudden he startedup in his chair. The prostration which had possessed him appearedto vanish in an instant. His eyes recovered their wild light; hishands were steady again; his color was brighter than ever. Had hebeen pondering over the secret of my interest in Mrs. Beauly? andhad he guessed? He had!

"Answer on your word of honor!" he cried. "Don't attempt todeceive me! Is it a woman?"

"It is."

"What is the first letter of her name? Is it one of the firstthree letters of the alphabet?"

"Yes."

"B?"

"Yes."

"Beauly?"

"Beauly."

He threw his hands up above his head, and burst into a franticfit of laughter.

"I have lived long enough!" he broke out, wildly. "At last I havediscovered one other person in the world who sees it as plainlyas I do. Cruel Mrs. Valeria! why did you torture me? Why didn'tyou own it before?"

"What!" I exclaimed, catching the infection of his excitement."Are _your_ ideas _my_ ideas? Is it possible that _you_ suspectMrs. Beauly too?"

He made this remarkable reply:

"Suspect?" he repeated, contemptuously. "There isn't the shadowof a doubt about it. Mrs. Beauly poisoned her."