Page:Miss Madelyn Mack Detective.pdf/105

like the prisoner who inhales his first breath of freedom.

"I think you can guess the next chapter? Am I verging too much on the lines of the woman novelist? It was not until the evening which was to have made her the bride of Norris Endicott, that she discovered her ghastly mistake—which another hour would have made still more ghastly.

"Reginald Winters not only was living, but he had followed her to her father's door. To make our melodrama complete, in a characteristic note he reminded her of the disagreeable fact that she was his wife."

Madelyn's eyes closed wearily. When she opened them, the lines of strain on her face seemed more intense than ever—in contrast to her light tone.

"In a novel, the bride, driven to desperation, would have killed her Nemesis. But women of real life seldom have the desperation of those of romance. Bertha Van Sutton turned to the last refuge in the world that the woman in the novel would have sought. She carried her burden and her problem to the man who was waiting to place his wedding ring on her finger.

"She dismissed her maid, bolted the door of her room, and stepped out on to the veranda below, with a dark cloak thrown over her white dress. Once at Norris Endicott's apartment, it was a