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closed behind the Duchess—and that part of the assembled masquerade, that had not fled at the first instance of blood, commenced a dispirited milling about the drawing-room. I surveyed the ranks hastily, and could find no trace of Madam Lefroy’s acquaintance, the Red Harlequin, or of the bearded Pierrot who had conversed at such length with Maria Conyngham. Some fifty guests arrayed in motley nonetheless remained. Most eyes were careful to avoid the pathetic figure felled upon the exquisite carpet, or the group of actors despondent at its feet; and Dr. Gibbs was so good as to summon a footman, and request some bed linen, for the composure of the body.
    “Jane.” Madam Lefroy raised a shaking hand to my arm. “I must leave this place at once. At once! I cannot bear the pall of death! I find in it a terrible presentiment!”
    “More brandy, Henry,” Eliza said tersely, “and perhaps some smelling salts. Enquire of Lady Desdemona.”
    My brother hastened away, and I knelt to Madam Lefroy.
    “Dear friend,” I said softly, “you must rally, I fear. Indeed you must. For we none of us may quit the household until the constables have come. At the first opportunity, I assure you, we shall summon a chaise and attend you home.”
    She closed her eyes and gripped my fingers painfully.
    F OR THE CONSTABLES’ ARRIVAL WAS REQUIRED PERHAPS A quarter-hour, the streets being all but deserted at that time of night. At the approach to Laura Place, however, the party encountered some difficulty—the way being blocked by an assemblage of chairmen in attendanceupon the rout, and expectant of any amount of custom when it should be concluded. The news that a murder had occurred within, was incapable of deterring these hardy souls, who had braved a night of snow and considerable cold in pursuit of pence; and it was with a clamour of indignation, and the most vociferous protests, that they suffered the constables to clear them from the stoop.
    I observed all this from the vantage of a drawing-room window, having grown intolerably weary of turning about the overheated room in attendance upon the Law. If Simon, Marquis of Kinsfell, was to be credited—for such, I had learned, was the Knight’s full title—then the chairmen must have observed the murderer in the act of leaping from the anteroom window. The prospect of that apartment gave out onto Laura Place, in company with the window at which I now stood. It should be a simple matter to question the fellows assembled below—
    But I had only to entertain the thought, before it was superseded by another. Had the chairmen observed a figure to exit the Dowager’s window in considerable stealth, should not they have given chase? One had only to shout out “Thief!” in any street of the city, and a crowd of willing pursuers was sure to form, intent upon the rewards of capture. But no hue or cry had arisen from below—and thus a faint seed of doubt regarding Lord Kinsfell must form itself in my heart.
    A sudden hush brought my gaze around from the window—the constables were arrived, two grizzled elders more accustomed to calling out the watch than attending a murder among the Quality—and with them, Mr. Wilberforce Elliot.
    He was a large and shambling man, got up in a wine-coloured frock coat, much stained, and a soiled shirt. His neckcloth was barely equal to the corpulence of his neck, and in being forced into service, had so impeded the flow of air to his lungs, that his countenance was brilliantlyred and overlaid with moisture. But Wilberforce Elliot was an imposing figure, nonetheless, in that room arrayed for frivolity—a figure that stunned the assemblage to a devout and listening stillness.
    “Your Grace,” the magistrate said, as he doffed his hat and bowed. A clubbed hank of black hair, thick and dirty as a bear’s, tumbled over one shoulder. “Your humble servant.”
    “Mr. Elliot,” the Dowager Duchess replied. “You are very good to venture out at such an