"The writing down of this confession from the lips of the dying man occupied an hour and a quarter; the reading of it will take perhaps fifteen minutes. Can you hear it now, or are you too much fatigued with your journey, and would you prefer to put off the reading until to-morrow morning?" inquired the lawyer, looking from Sybil to Lyon.
"Put off the reading of that document until to-morrow? By no means! Read it at once, if you please," replied Mr. Berners, with a glance at his wife, which she at once understood and acted upon by hastening to say:
"Oh, yes! yes! read it at once! I could not sleep now without first hearing it."
"Very well, then," said the lawyer, as he unfolded the paper and prepared to peruse it.
The confession of Horace Blondelle need not be given in full here. A synopsis of it will serve our purpose.
As the son of a wicked old nobleman and a worthless young ballet dancer, he had been brought up in the very worst school of morality.
His mother closed her career in a hospital. His father died at an advanced age, leaving him a large legacy.
His beauty, his wit, and his money enabled him to insinuate himself into the rather lax society of fashionable watering places and other public resorts.
He had married three times. First he married a certain Lady Riordon, the wealthy widow of an Irish knight, and the mother of Raphael, who became his step-son. He soon squandered this lady's fortune, and broke her heart.
After her death he joined himself to a band of smugglers trading between the French and English coast, and consorted with them until he had made money for a fashionable campaign among the watering places. He went to Scarborough, where he met and married the fair young Scotch widow Rosa Douglass.