Apparently she was the last person who saw him alive before he was shot, and now she is not to be found." There was something so portentously solemn in his manner of speaking these last words that his listener quaked in terror, and gazed at him with widened eyes.

Barrant turned abruptly to another phase.
"Are you quite sure that it was the man-servant you saw looking through the door yesterday afternoon ?" It was proof of the fallibility of human testimony that Mrs.Pendleton had sincerely convinced herself that she was quite sure.

"Yes," she said.
Barrant looked doubtful.

By reason of his calling he was well aware of the human tendency to unintentional mistake in identity.

With women especially, the jump from an impression to a conclusion was sometimes as rapid as the thought itself.
"Did you see his face ?" he asked.
"Only the eyes.