What explanation had the police, now, for those two emptied glasses?
They had hitherto supposed me to be the second person who had joined Adelaide in this totally uncharacteristic drinking.
To whom did they now attribute this act?
To Arthur, the brother whose love for liquor in every form she had always decried, and had publicly rebuked only a few hours before?
Knowing nothing of Carmel having been on the scene, they must ascribe this act either to him or to me; and when they came to dwell upon this point more particularly--when they came to study the exact character of the relations which had always subsisted between Adelaide and her brother--they must see the improbability of her drinking with him under any circumstances.

Then their thoughts would recur to me, and I should find myself again a suspect.

The monstrous suggestion that Arthur had brought the liquor there himself, had poured it out and forced her to drink it, poison and all, out of revenge for her action at the dinner-table a short time before, did not occur to me then, but if it had, there were the three glasses--he would not bring _three_; nor would Adelaide; nor, as I saw it, would Carmel.
Chaos! However one looked at it, chaos! Only one fact was clear--that Carmel knew the whole story and might communicate the same, if ever her brain cleared and she could be brought to reveal the mysteries of that hour.

Did I desire such a consummation?
Only God, who penetrates more deeply than ourselves into the hidden regions of the human heart, could tell.

I only know that the fear and expectation of such an outcome made my anguish for the next two weeks.
Would she live?
Would she die?
The question was on every tongue.