"Of Miss Emily Dorset, to tell what she did not tell that day five years
ago. After this other reading of the tale has been rendered, her letter
and those documents are there for fuller testimony. Just Trafford's part
in the drama begins, of course, with the library scene. Now Duke Lawless
had never known Trafford's half-brother, Hall Vincent. Hall was born in
India, and had lived there most of his life. He was in the Indian
Police, and had married a clever, beautiful, but impossible kind of girl,
against the wishes of her parents. The marriage was not a very happy
one. This was partly owing to the quick Lawless and Trafford blood,
partly to the wife's wilfulness. Hall thought that things might go
better if he came to England to live. On their way from Madras to
Colombo he had some words with his wife one day about the way she
arranged her hair, but nothing serious. This was shortly after tiffin.
That evening they entered the harbour at Colombo; and Hall going to his
cabin to seek his wife, could not find her; but in her stead was her
hair, arranged carefully in flowing waves on the pillow, where through
the voyage her head had lain. That she had cut it off and laid it there
was plain; but she could not be found, nor was she ever found. The large
porthole was open; this was the only clue. But we need not go further
into that. Hall Vincent came home to England. He told his brother the
story as it has been told to you, and then left for South America, a
broken-spirited man. The wife's family came on to England also. They
did not meet Hall Vincent; but one day Just Trafford met at a country
seat in Devon, for the first time, the wife's sister. She had not known
of the relationship between Hall Vincent and the Traffords; and on a
memorable afternoon he told her the full story of the married life and
the final disaster, as Hall had told it to him."