But while she said it, there was a look in the reader's eye that

bespoke inability or reluctance to grapple with the revelation

threatened by the discovery.

"The letters may tell me more!" she added, in the same frightened

whisper, refolding the certificate.

They did--for they were in the long, sloping chirography of her

sister-in-law, and signed "Your ever-fond, but lonely wife." Each

contained, moreover, allusions to "Ellis," to "Clermont," to

"Julia," and to "Herbert"--all family names in the Dorrance

connection; spoke gratefully of her parents' kindness to his "poor

Louise" in the absence of "her beloved Julius;" and was liberally

spiced with passionate protestations of her inconsolableness and

yearnings for his return. Both were dated ten years back, and the

paper was yellow with time, besides being creased and thumbed as by

many readings.

"What am I to do?" thought Mabel, sinking into her chair, trembling

all over with terror and incertitude.

If there were one sentiment in Winston Aylett's heart that equalled

his haughtiness, it was love for his wife. But could it be that he

had totally forgotten pride and his habitual caution in the

selection of the woman who was to be the partner of his home,

fortune, and reputation--possibly the mother of children who were to

perpetuate the noble name he bore? By what miracle of unrighteous

craft, what subornation of witnesses, what concealments, what

barefaced and unscrupulous falsehoods had this adventuress been

imposed upon him as unmarried, when the evidence of her former

wedlock was held by a low stroller--a drunken wretch who might

betray it in an unguarded or insane hour, and who, judging from his

exterior, would not be averse to publishing or selling the

information if he could make more money by doing this than by

preserving the secret. And how came he by these papers?

Confused, partly by his numerous aliases, more by incapacity to

conceive of such depth and complication of horror as were revealed

by the idea, the perplexed thinker did not, for a while, admit to

herself the possibility that the nameless vagabond may have been

Clara's living husband, instead of a mercenary villain who had

secured surreptitiously the proofs of a marriage she wished the

world to forget. Having learned that she had wedded, a second time,

in her maiden name, and that her antecedents were unsuspected in her

present home, the thought of extorting a bribe to continued silence,

from the wealthy lady of Ridgeley, would have occurred to any common

rascal with more audacity than principle. It was but a spark--the

merest point of light that showed her the verge of the precipice

toward which one link after another of the chain of circumstantial

evidence was dragging her.




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