“It went to your old lodgings. The man handed it to me to give to you when I called there.”
“And you tore it up?”
“Yes. I didn’t want you to know Zyp and I were married.”
“Now, I’ve done with you. For Zyp’s sake I give you the chance of escaping from the dreadful fate that awaits you if you get in that other’s way. I warn you—nothing further. For the rest, never come near me again, or look to me to hold out a finger of help to you. Beyond that, if you breathe one more note of the hideous slander with which you have pursued me for years, I go heart and soul with Duke in destroying you. You may be guilty of Modred’s death, as you are in God’s sight the murderer of that unhappy child who has gone to His judgment.”
“I didn’t kill him,” he muttered again; and with that, without another word or look, I left him.
CHAPTER XXIX.
A SUDDEN DETERMINATION.
The inquest was over; the jury had returned a merciful verdict; the mortal perishing part of poor, weak and lovable Dolly was put gently out of sight for the daisies to grow over by and by.
Jason had been called, but, not responding, and his presumed evidence being judged not necessarily material to the inquiry, had escaped the responsibility of an examination and, as I knew, for the time being at least, a deadlier risk. Mention of his name left an ugly stain on the proceedings, and that was all.
Now, night after night, alone with myself and my despair, I sat brooding over the wreck and ruin of my life. Zyp, so far as this life was concerned, could never now be mine; and full realization of this had burst upon me only at the moment when the moral barrier that had divided me from her was broken down. That wound must forevermore eat like a cancer within me.
Then, in the worst writhing moments of my anguish, a new savage lust of sleuth began to prickle and crawl over me like a leprosy. If all else were taken from me I still had that interest to cheer me through life—the hounding of my brother’s murderer. This feeling was curiously intermingled with a revival in my heart of loyalty to Modred. He had been my friend—at least inextricably kin to me in a common cause against the world. When I turned to the vile figure of the brother who survived, the dead boy’s near-forgotten personality showed up in a light almost lovably humorous and pathetic. My fevered soul bathed itself in the memory of his whimsicalities, till very tenderness begot an oath that I would never rest till I had tracked down his destroyer.