Without pause or hesitation, then, I gave him the full history of my inquisition, from the utterance of the first word which had launched me on it, to my final interview with his wife. And at the end, “Lord Skene,” I said, “judge all this as you will. There is still the worst to come—the corner-stone to such a monument of villainy as I never dreamed of unveiling when I started. I beg, sir, with all the passion of entreaty I can command, that you will brace yourself to hear a very dreadful truth. I told you, on that former occasion, that I had come by accident upon part of a letter written by your son to Mr Thesiger. Here it is.”
I laid the faded sheet before him. He read it through once, twice, three times; and looked up at me with a lost expression.
“Well?” he whispered hoarsely.
“It is your son’s, sir?”
“Yes, it is from Charlie.”
“The reference in it, sir—the ‘You-know-who’?”
“Yes—well?”
“Is to Mrs Dalston, I cannot doubt. He was married to her first.”
“Who? Charlie?”
“Yes; and, because of it—O! sir, for all it means to you, compose yourself to meet the blow—because of it, was done to death by the man who is now Mrs Dalston’s husband, and your own wife’s damned betrayer.”