The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1922-12-19

was precisely the word I used
 And Bessie LonsdaIe listened for the second time that day while two voices, now, instead of one, were lifted in excoriation of some woman who seemed to grow, as they talked, only shade less real than herself. 0HE had again the sensation of
 the words beating upon her like N>> blows which she was powerless to resist She lost, as one does in physical pain, all sense of time-
 However" MT. Ford brought down his hand with kind of judicial finality, If Mrs. LonsdaIe will come on down with us now-the storm seems to have sIackened-wen see what can be done" He turned in his chair as if he were preparing to rise.
 At the movement Bessie Lonsdale seemed to grow rigid in her chair. Wait"
 MT Burke and MT. Ford turned, startled by the strangeness of her tone. They waited for her to speak
 q can't go-''
 Can't go?" They echoed it to- gether. Why not?" DSC1OSSy SnS Sd1u, am the woman you have been talking about
 For an instant they sat perfectly motionless, the three of them, Then slowly MT. Burke and MT. Ford 1 turned their heads and looked at each other, as if to verify what they had heard. MT. Burke put out his | hand toward Bessie Lonsdale's arm, resting on the table and he spoke | very gently indeed:
 My dear Mrs. Lonsdale, this is | impossible
 f impossible" she said, passing her hand across her eyes, impossible % | Yes, Mrs. Lonsdale' He spoke | reasonably, as if she were a child. 1 It couldn't be you" He turned now 70 include MT. Ford, who sat staring at them both. q myself gave Mrs. Lonsdale the news of MT. AyIing's death over the telephone. She was at her home, in Cambridge Terrace. quietly having tea with a friend; the friend was still there when I arrived You have been at home, in London. all day"
 'tNo," she said. 'No, MT. Burke. 7" l T think" said MT. Ford, also very gently indeed, that perhaps Mrs. Lonsdale is trying to shield some one"
 Until that instant Bessie IonsdaIe had no plan She had only known l that she could not go with them to Honebury St. Mary, there to be recognized But something in the suggestion of MT. Ford-in the tone, perhaps, more than the words caused her to say, looking from one to the other of these two men so lately strangerfs to her: l T wonder-I wonder if I could make you understand"
 They begged her to believe that that was the thing they wished most to do.
 T did it''-she paused, and forced herself to go on-''because of my daughter"
 Intent upon her truth, she did not even see by the shocked expression of their faces the awfu1Dess of the l thing they thought she confessed and the obviousness of the reason to which their minds had leaped. | MT. Burke put out his hand again and laid it upon her arm, which trembled slightly at his touch. Mrs. Lonsdale,'' he said, and this time he spoke even more gently, but more urgently. than before, ''are you sure you wish to tell?"
 "No," said Bessie LonsdaIe, 'fbut I've got to, don't you seer" | MT. Ford moved in his chair. and spoke, guarding his voice, judiciaIly. Since we have gone so far, it will be even better, perhaps, for Mrs. Lonsdale to tell it to us here"
 MT. Burke nodded, and they looked toward her expectantIy.
 "Yes, Mrs. Lonsdale?' said MT. Ford.
 A N instant later the brown
 "A fecked eyes appeared to be = = searching for some human con tact which she seemed vaguely to have lost. And then she began at the begfnning-with her daughters engagement to young Andrew Mo Crae, her happiness, her security and quietly, with only now and then a slight tension of her body and her voice, she told it all to them, exactly as it happened, without plea or establishment. She had only one stress, and that she tried to make reasonable to them-her childs security.
 | And they waited, attentive and patient, for the motive to emerge, for 1 the beginning of that complication between her daughter and Richard Ayling, which they believed was to be the crux of her narrative.
 And as her story progressed their bewilderment increased, for never, it appeared, had Bessie LonsdaIe's daughter so much as heard of the existence of the man who lay dead at Homebury inn. She seemed even to make a special point of that.
 They thought she but put it off against the time when it should be forced from her lips; but her story did not halt; she was telling it step by step, accounting for every hour of the time.
 They waited for her to offer proof 1 of the condition of Ayling's heart She dld not mention 1t, except to say, when she came to relating the mo- ment of her discovery, that she had not thought of it; that even when she opened the door of his room she did not think directly of his heart; and only when she saw him actually lying there so peacefully dead did she remember the danger in which he constantly lived She seemed to