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.