"I'm afraid so--you see a thing like this can't very well be hushed up," said Anstice rather reluctantly. "And though I can't help feeling thankful that Mrs. Carstairs will have justice done to her at last, I'm sure we all feel we would have borne a good deal sooner than let this dreadful thing happen."
"Dr. Anstice"--Chloe turned to him almost appealingly--"are we really to blame? If we hadn't plotted, set a trap to catch my poor Tochatti, this would not have come to pass; and I shall always feel that by leaving the dagger in my dressing-case I was the means of bringing this dreadful tragedy about."
"Come, Mrs. Carstairs, you mustn't talk nonsense of that kind!" His tone was bracing. "You were not in the least to blame. If anyone was, I should be the person, seeing I did not warn you of this possibility. But you know the poor soul was a very determined woman; and if she had set her mind on self-destruction she would have carried out her intention somehow."
"Well, at least there will be no object in keeping the authorship of those confounded letters a secret now," said Major Carstairs, putting his hand kindly on his wife's arm. "After all poor Tochatti has done us a service by her death which will go far towards wiping out the injury of her life. And now it is one o'clock, and we none of us had much sleep last night----"
"You're right," said Anstice quickly, "and Mrs. Carstairs looks worn out. Can't you persuade her to go to bed, Major Carstairs? There is really no need for her to stay here harrowing her feelings another moment."
"I'll go," she said at once. "Good-night again, Dr. Anstice. It will comfort me to know that you don't think me entirely to blame--for this."
"I think you are as innocent in this matter as in that other one we discussed to-night," he said quietly. "And this poor woman here, if, as we may surely believe, she has regained by now the sanity she may have temporarily lost, would be the last to think any but kindly thoughts of you in the light of her fuller humanity."
"Thank you," she said again, as she had said it earlier in the evening; and once more they exchanged the firm and cordial handshake by which those who are truly friends seal their parting.
When he had closed the door behind her he came back to the bedside where Major Carstairs still stood, looking down on the dead woman with an unfathomable expression in his eyes.