“No, Mark, I am right: you told us you took refuge with a friend—that friend was my father.”
“What! Rich, do you know what you are saying—do you know what this means if the police should hear?”
“Yes,” she cried; “the clearing up of a terrible mystery; perhaps the restoration of all that you have lost.”
“Janet, is she mad?” cried Mark. “Do you not see what all this means?”
Janet shook her head with a helpless look on her face.
“Then I will tell you,” he thundered: “it means ruin—misery to us all. Girl, for pity’s sake, be silent! Rich, dear Rich, I love you with a man’s first strong love. Have I not slaved for you all these years, to win you for my own true wife? Don’t—don’t raise this up between us. What is poverty to such a shadow as this?”
“I do not understand you,” she cried; “but it is true. You did come to my father’s house that night.”
He gazed at her in blank despair.
“Why do you look at me like that? Do you not see the light?”
“The light!” he cried, with a bitter laugh. “I see you—the woman I love—trying to force me into a position which I would sooner die than hold. Hush, for mercy’s sake! No, no, no!” he muttered; and then aloud, “Call it a lie, or a desperate man’s last cry for help. I did not come to your father’s house that night.”