"It concerned you very nearly, dear madam."
Their eyes met, and those of the widow were filled with mingled astonishment and horror.
"No, Lord Spunyarn; do not tell me that Lucius's father was——" and her eyes flashed with indignant rage.
"It is best to get it over—he was your husband!"
There was a dead silence of some seconds.
"Go on, Lord Spunyarn," said the widow in a hollow voice; "then I am guiltless at least of deceiving him for years. It is horrible!" But she shed no tear.
"Your husband, dear lady, when he was dying, gave it in charge to me to let you see the contents of this box, which, he too truly said, would explain all. I, too, at times, had my suspicions; for remember this, I too loved your cousin long ago, and your husband was my dearest friend." The man buried his face in his hands and was silent for a moment; he pulled himself together with an effort. "When I saw what the box contained, the whole ghastly secret was laid bare to me in an instant. You remember when we were in Rome, by chance, by merest chance, I saw your husband at a masked ball with a lady; at that ball arose the quarrel between your husband and the unfortunate Frenchman who fell by his hand. The box will tell you the rest. The masked lady wore a magnificent pair of single-stone diamond earrings." Spunyarn unlocked the box, placed it in front of his friend's widow and walked to the window.
With trembling fingers Mrs. Haggard opened it. There was a little packet of letters in Lucy Warrender's undeveloped girlish hand, the ink of which had faded; then a pair of single-stone brilliant earrings, which sparkled and shimmered in the firelight, as the widow took them in her trembling fingers; to one of them was still attached the duplicate of the Mont de Piété, dated the very day of her cousin's death. Last of all was a little purple velvet case on which was her husband's monogram with the single word "Rome," and a date just over twenty years ago. She opened it with difficulty; in it was a lovely miniature, not a mere photographer's likeness, of her cousin Lucy in all the pride of her girlish beauty, as a shepherdess, in powdered hair and in a Watteau costume. The face seemed to smile at her with an air of insolent triumph, that old smile of Lucy's which her cousin remembered so well in the days gone by, but which she had missed for many a long year. The painter had not forgotten to place in the ears of the shepherdess a pair of single-stone earrings; in the hand was the ordinary black silk vizard worn at masquerades, and the shepherdess was depicted in the act of unmasking. Nothing more pretty, nothing more piquant, nothing more chic could be imagined. The widow placed the miniature upon the table, and as she did so a single object still remaining in the box caught her eye. It was only a little black silk mask, and from the two holes in the toy, in her disordered imagination, the eyes of her dead cousin still seemed to sparkle with a mocking light. She dropped the miniature into the box and closed the lid which shut out the horrid phantom.
As the box closed with an angry click, Lord Spunyarn turned towards the victim of her husband's perfidy.
"There is no need of explanation; my husband was right. I understand it all, but I forgave him, Lord Spunyarn, and I forgive him still. Poor Lucius!"