"May I be pardoned," he said, "if I repeat to you what I saw in print lately—in a famous English paper? They spoke of this divorce case which has lasted so long; they spoke of it as about to be finally decided. There was some fresh evidence about to be produced, a special court was to be held."
Madame de Melbain turned, if possible, a shade paler.
"Yes!" she said slowly, "I have heard of that. We have all heard of that. I want to tell you, Mr. Wrayson, what that fresh evidence consists of."
Wrayson bowed and waited. Somehow he felt that he was on the eve of a great discovery.
"Both before my marriage and afterwards," Madame de Melbain said quietly, "I wrote to—Captain Fitzmaurice. I was always impulsive—when I was younger, and my letters, especially one written on the eve of my marriage, would no doubt decide the case against me. Captain Fitzmaurice was killed—in Natal, but in a mysterious way news has reached me of the letters since his death."
"In what way?" Wrayson asked.
For the first time, Madame de Melbain glanced a little nervously about her. Against listeners, however, they seemed absolutely secure. There was no hiding-place, nor any one within sight. Upon the land was everywhere the silence of a great heat. Even in the shade where they sat the still air was hot and breathless. Down in the valley the cows stood knee deep in the stream, and a blue haze hung over the vineyards.
"Nearly eighteen months ago," Madame de Melbain continued, "I received a letter signed by the name of Morris Barnes. The writer said that he had just arrived from South Africa, and had picked up on one of the battlefields there a bundle of letters, which he had come to the conclusion must have been written by me. He did not mince matters in the least. He was a blackmailer pure and simple. He had given me the first chance of buying these letters! What was my offer?"
A sharp ejaculation broke from Wrayson's lips. Louise signed to him to be silent.
"Amy was with me when the letters came," Madame de Melbain continued. "She left at once for England to see this man. The sum he demanded was impossible. All that she could do was to ask for time, and to arrange to pay him so much a month whilst we were considering how to raise the money. He accepted this, and promised to keep silence. He kept his word, but for a time only. He made inquiries, and he seems to have come to the conclusion that the money was on the other side. At any rate, he approached the advisers of my husband. He was in treaty with them for the letters—when he—when he met with his death!"