Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1899-04-22

come upon in her persistent pursuit of the
flying criminal. So impulsve an act might
be consistent with the blind compassion of
some weak-headed but Warm-hearted WO-
men, but not with her self-interested ma
ture, incapable of performing any heroic
deed save from personal motives or the
most headlong passion.
Lastly. the weakness of her explanation
In regard to the causes which led her to
peer into the label cottage through a hole
made in the window shade. Curiosity has
us limits even in a Woman's breast, and
unless she hoped to see more than her
words indicated her action was but the
precursor of a personal entrance into a
room where We have every reason to be-
ieve the SO bill was left
a telling record and sufficient to favor
the theory of her personal guilt if after
due thought certain facts in contradiction
10 this assumption had not offered them
selves to his mind even before he thought
of Frederick as the unknown man she had
followed down the hillside, as for instance:
This crime. If committed by her. was
done deliberately and with a premedita-
tlon anteddting her departure from the ball
room. Yet she went upon this errand In
slippers. white slippers at that something
which so cool and calculating a woman
would have avoided, however careless she
might have shown herself in other regards
Again, guilt awakens cunning, even in the
dullest breast; but she. keen beyond most
men even, and SO self-poSed that the most
searching examination could not shake her
as to what she did with these slippers on
her return, thrusting them into place
easily accessible to the most casual search
Had she been conscious of guilt and thus
amenable to law, the sight of blood and
mud stains on those slippers would have
appalled, her. and she would have made
some attempt to destroy them and not put
them behind a picture and forgotten them
as her very evident lack of anxiety in re-
gard 10 them proves her to have done.
Again. would she have been so careless
with flower she knew to be identified
with herself? A woman who deliberately
involves herself in crime has quick eyes:
she would have seen that flower fall At
all events. if she had been Immediately re-
sponsble for its being on the scene Of crime
she would. with her quick wit, have found
some excuse or explanation for 1t, and not
have flung her defiance at the law in some
such words as these: ut is a fact for you
! to explain l only know that l did not
carry 1t to the scene of murder"
Again. had she been actuated in her at
tempt 10 fix the crime on old James label
by personal consciousness of guilt and
personal dread. she would not have stopped
at suggestion In her illusions to the person
she watched burying the treasure in the
woods Instead of speaking of him as
shadow whose flight she had followed at
distance, she would have described his fig
ure as that of the same old man she had
seen enter the label cottage a few minutes
before. there being no reason for Indefinite
ness on this point. her conscience being
sufficiently elastic for any falsehood that
would further her ends. And lastly her
manner, under the examination TO which
she had been subjected. was not that of
one who felt herself under a personal at
tack. 1t was n strange, suggestive hesitat-
. ing manner battling alike to him who had
more or less sounded her strange nature
and to those who had no previous knowl-
edge of her freaks and subtle intellectual
power, and only reaching its height of hate
| full charm and mysterious daring when
! frederick aDDearpd he IA lin
ed or seemed to join, himself to the num-
Der Of her examiners
Now. drop ali suspicion of her as the
active agent in this crime. and assume
Frederick 10 be the culprit and she the
simple accessory after the fact and see
how Inconsistencies vanish, and how much
more natural the whole conduct of this
mysterious woman appears
Amabel Page left a merry dance at mid
night and stole away into the Sutherland
garden in her party dress and slippers
why? Not to fulfill errand which any
one who knows her cold and unsympathetic
| nature can but regard as a pretext, but be-
cause she felt II imperative to see if her
lover with whose character, foundations
ana necessities she was fully acquainted
and in whose excited and preoccupied man.
| ner she had probably discovered signs of
! secretly growing purpose) meant indeed to
elude his guests and slip away TO town
on the dangerous and unholy enterprise
suggested by their mutual knowledge of
the money 10 be got there by one daring
enough TO enter certain house open like
their own to midnight visitors.
She followed at such hour and into
Such place, not an unknown man cas-
ually come upon, but her lover whom she
had tracked from the garden of his father
| house, where she had lain In wait for him
II took courage to do this, but a courage
no longer beyond the limit of feminins dar-
ing, Tor her fate was bound up In his and
she could not but feel the impulse to save