The Woman in the Alcove by Anna Katharine Green

The success of this interview provoked other attempts on the part of the / reporters who now flocked into the Southwest. Ere long particulars began to / pour in of Mr. Fairbrother's painful journey south, after his illness set in. / The clerk of the hotel in El Moro, where the great mine-owner's name was found / registered at the time of the murder, told a story which made very good reading / for those who were more interested in the sufferings and experiences of the / millionaire husband of the murdered lady than in those of the unhappy but / comparatively insignificant man upon whom public opinion had cast the odium of / her death.

It seems that when the first news came of the great crime which had taken place / in New York, Mr. Fairbrother was absent from the hotel on a prospecting tour / through the adjacent mountains. Couriers had been sent after him, and it was / one of these who finally brought him into town. He had been found wandering / alone on horseback among the defiles of an untraveled region, sick and almost / incoherent from fever. Indeed, his condition was such that neither the courier / nor such others as saw him had the heart to tell him the dreadful news from New / York, or even to show him the papers. To their great relief, he betrayed no / curiosity in them. All he wanted was a berth in the first train going south, / and this was an easy way for them out of a great responsibility.