“Can you prove that to me?”
“Sure!”
CHAPTER XIX.
On the afternoon of the second day following the rescue of Dorothy, Mr. Thorpe, accompanied by his child, visited Mr. Harris by urgent invitation. The trees were still dressed in their leafy glow of autumn glory and, with the luxuriant green velvety grass of the lawn, invited a pause for contemplation of the entrancingly serene and happy condition earth intended her children to enjoy. Above was a clear, infinitely beautiful blue sky, through which the radiant orb of day poured down its golden shafts of light in masses of exuberant splendor and warmth.
It was an environment singularly touching and persuasive in its appeal to human nature for “Peace on earth and good will toward men.”
As John Thorpe and his child walked up the path toward the house and arrived near the spot where his quarrel with Mr. Corway had taken place, just one week previous, he could not but halt, sensitive to the insidious influence so softly streaming about him—so gentle, yet so powerful in contra-distinction to the unhappy change that had so recently come into his life. Oh, for something to banish the bitter memories conjured up as his gaze riveted on the “damned spot” where his wife’s inconstancy had been told to him.
And as he looked, a far-off dreamy stare settled in his eyes, as there unrolled before his vision the sweet bliss of happy years fled—gone, as he thought, never to return.
“Oh, God!” he exclaimed, overwhelmed with sudden emotion, and he clapped his hand to his forehead as an involuntary groan of anguish welled up from his heart.
His composure slowly returned to him, but the eroding effect of his smothered anguish would not obliterate, and he found himself thinking, “It was unwise to come to this place—here where memory is embittered by recollections of what has been. Terrible revelation! Terrible! Yet—I could not have been brought to credit it but for the evidence of my eyes.”
These words seemed to startle him with a new light, for he paused, and then in a voice almost reduced to a whisper, fruitful with eager doubt, said, “What have my eyes proved to me? Is there room for a possibility of a mistake? No, no! The ring is evidence of her guilt. Oh, Constance, when I needed you, the world owned no purer or more perfect woman; but now—fallen, fallen, fallen!”