“I resolved to break their engagement and first endeavor to estrange him—from your friendship. To accomplish that end I traduced his character and created a suspicion that his attention to Hazel was insincere and mercenary, expecting that after Corway was denied access to your home, I could smooth over the unpleasantness between you and Hazel and eventually annul his betrothal to her. But your informant juggled the names, made Constance the subject of Corway’s affection instead of Hazel, and led you to believe the ring was a love token from her to him.”
“He insisted and repeated that Constance was the guilty one and not Hazel,” dubiously commented Thorpe.
“I understand now, it was out of revenge,” she laconically replied.
“Revenge! What wrong have I done Lord Beauchamp?” questioned Thorpe, amazed at Virginia’s disclosures.
“You will understand when I disclose, as I have recently learned that he is Philip Rutley, masquerading as Lord Beauchamp.”
“God of our fathers!” exclaimed Thorpe, clapping his hand to his white forehead, to still the pain of sudden doubt of his wife’s inconstancy, that had seized him.
“What punishment is this inflicted on me?”
Then turning to Virginia with fierce light in his eyes, he sprang at her. In one bound he clutched her by the wrist, glared in her eyes, and said:
“And you, my only sister, have known all this and permitted him to wreak his vengeance upon my innocent wife, who never bore him malice, or did him wrong by thought, word or deed.”
“I did not think that harm would fall on Constance.” Yet even before she had finished speaking, a change came over Thorpe, and his grip on her wrist loosened. A victim of doubt and suspicion, his moods were as changing and variable as the coloring of a chameleon. Apparently he was not yet satisfied of the complete innocence of his wife or of the truthfulness of his sister, for he said, in a voice saddened by reflection: “That does not explain your connection with the abduction of Dorothy.”