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Fifty Candles

“Come, come!” broke in Barnes. “Let’s get on. You heard the cry?”

“Miss Tellfair ran out of the room,” went on Carlotta Drew.

“I started to,” corrected Mary Will, the color rising in her white cheeks. “But you held me back. You clung to me———”

“I tell you I was beside myself. I didn’t know what I was doing.”

“You take it up,” suggested Barnes to Mary Will.

“I managed to get away,” Mary Will said, “and ran down-stairs. I looked in the library; it was empty. The dining-room door was open. I went in———”

“You were, then, the second person to enter the room?”

“Very likely.” Mary Will’s voice was low now—little more than a whisper. “I thought the room empty at first. The window stood open. I went round the table, and there—on the floor—I saw him—Mr. Drew.”

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