Ada looked at him earnestly for a moment, and then her lip curled with a bitter smile.
"What have you done, Jacob Strong! Can you ask that question of William Leicester's wife, so soon after your own act has made her a widow?"
"But how?—how did I make you a widow?" said he, turning pale with suppressed feeling.
"How?" cried Ada, almost with a shriek, for the passion of her nature had been gathering force all day, and now it burst forth with a degree of violence that shook her whole frame. "Who sat like a great, hideous spider in his web, watching him as he wove and entangled the meshes of crime around him? Who stung my pride, spurred on all that was unforgiving and haughty in my nature, till I too—unnatural wretch—who had wronged and sinned against him—turned in my unholy pride, and drove him into deeper evil? It was you, Jacob Strong, who did this. It was you who urged him into the fearful strait, that admitted of no escape but death. The guilt of this self-murder rests with you, and with me. My heart is black with his blood; my brain reels when the thought presses on it. I hate you—and oh! a thousand times more do I hate myself—the pitiful tool of my own menial!"
"Your menial, Ada Wilcox—have I ever been that?"
"No," was the passionate answer, "I have been your menial, your dupe. You have made me his murderer. I loved him, oh! Father of mercies, how I loved him!"
The wretched woman wrung her hands, and waved them up and down in the firelight so rapidly, that the restless brilliants upon them seemed shooting out sparks of lightning.
"I thought he would come back. He was cruel—he was insolent—but what was that? We might have known his haughty spirit would never bend. If he had died any other death—oh! anything, anything but this rankling knowledge, that I, his wife, drove him to self-murder!"
Jacob Strong left his position at the door, and coming close up to his mistress, took both her hands in his. He could not endure her reproaches. Her words stung his honest heart to the core.
"Sit down," he said, with gentle firmness—"sit down, Ada Wilcox, and listen to me. There is yet something that I have to say. If it will remove any of the bitterness that you harbor against me, if it can reconcile you to yourself, I can tell you that there is great doubt if your—if Mr. Leicester did commit suicide. Thinking it might grieve you more deeply, I kept the papers away that said anything of the matter; but even now a man lies in prison charged with his murder!"