“Imogene,” he slowly responded, “if, as you say, you are in possession of positive evidence against this Mansell, how comes it that you jeopardized the interests of the man you loved by so long withholding your testimony?”
But instead of the flush of confusion which he expected, she flashed upon him with a sudden revelation of feeling that made him involuntarily start.
“Shall I tell you?” she replied. “You will have to know some time, and why not now? I kept back the truth,” she replied, advancing a step, but without raising her eyes to his, “because it is not the aspersed Hildreth that I love, but—”
Why did she pause? What was it she found so hard to speak? Mr. Orcutt’s expression became terrible.
“But the other,” she murmured at last.
“The other!”
It was now her turn to start and look at him in surprise, if not in some fear.
“What other?” he cried, seizing her by the hand. “Name him. I will have no further misunderstanding between us.”
“Is it necessary?” she asked, with bitterness. “Will Heaven spare me nothing?” Then, as she saw no relenting in the fixed gaze that held her own, whispered, in a hollow tone: “You have just spoken the name yourself—Craik Mansell.”
“Ah!”
Incredulity, anger, perplexity, all the emotions that were seething in this man’s troubled soul, spoke in that simple exclamation. Then silence settled upon the room, during which she gained control over herself, and he the semblance of it if no more. She was the first to speak.
“I know,” said she, “that this avowal on my part seems almost incredible to you; but it is no more so than that which you so readily received from me the other day in reference to Gouverneur Hildreth. A woman who spends a month away from home makes acquaintances which she does not always mention when she comes back. I saw Mr. Mansell in Buffalo, and—” turning, she confronted the lawyer with her large gray eyes, in which a fire burned such as he had never seen there before—“and grew to esteem him,” she went on. “For the first time in my life I found myself in the presence of a man whose nature commanded mine. His ambition, his determination, his unconventional and forcible character woke aspirations within me such as I had never known myself capable of before. Life, which had stretched out before me with a somewhat monotonous outlook, changed to a panorama of varied and wonderful experiences, as I listened to his voice and met the glance of his eye; and soon, before he knew it, and certainly before I realized it, words of love passed between us, and the agony of that struggle began which has ended—Ah, let me not think how, or I shall go mad!”
Mr. Orcutt, who had watched her with a lover’s fascination during all this attempted explanation, shivered for a moment at this last bitter cry of love and despair, but spoke up when he did speak, with a coldness that verged on severity.
“So you loved another man when you came back to my home and listened to the words of passion which came from my lips, and the hopes of future bliss and happiness that welled up from my heart?”
“Yes,” she whispered, “and, as you will remember, I tried to suppress those hopes and turn a deaf ear to those words, though I had but little prospect of marrying a man whose fortunes depended upon the success of an invention he could persuade no one to believe in.”
“Yet you brought yourself to listen to those hopes on the afternoon of the murder,” he suggested, ironically.
“Can you blame me for that?” she cried, “remembering how you pleaded, and what a revulsion of feeling I was laboring under?”
A smile bitter as the fate which loomed before him, and scornful as the feelings that secretly agitated his breast, parted Mr. Orcutt’s pale lips for an instant, and he seemed about to give utterance to some passionate rejoinder, but he subdued himself with a determined effort, and quietly waiting till his voice was under full control, remarked with lawyer-like brevity at last:
“You have not told me what evidence you have to give against young Mansell?”
Her answer came with equal brevity if not equal quietness.
“No; I have told Mr. Ferris; is not that enough?”
But he did not consider it so. “Ferris is a District Attorney,” said he, “and has demanded your confidence for the purposes of justice, while I am your friend. The action you have taken is peculiar, and you may need advice. But how can I give it or how can you receive it unless there is a complete understanding between us?”
Struck in spite of herself, moved perhaps by a hope she had not allowed herself to contemplate before, she looked at him long and earnestly.
“And do you really wish to help me?” she inquired. “Are you so generous as to forgive the pain, and possibly the humiliation, I have inflicted upon you, and lend me your assistance in case my testimony works its due effect, and he be brought to trial instead of Mr. Hildreth?”
It was a searching and a pregnant question, for which Mr. Orcutt was possibly not fully prepared, but his newly gained control did not give way.
“I must insist upon hearing the facts before I say anything of my intentions,” he averred. “Whatever they may be, they cannot be more startling in their character than those which have been urged against Hildreth.”
“But they are,” she whispered. Then with a quick look around her, she put her mouth close to Mr. Orcutt’s ear and breathed:
“Mr. Hildreth is not the only man who, unseen by the neighbors, visited Mrs. Clemmens’ house on the morning of the murder. Craik
