“Ah.”
“Yes,” she said, raising her beautiful eyes to Scott’s face, “a victim of too much love. Bessie Graves, a beautiful, innocent, confiding girl, the pet of the house, made a hopeless maniac, and a suicide, by the false pretense of Max Brunswick’s love.”
Scott started, and his compressed lips betrayed the storm within.
“That villain again,” he said, “where is he now?”
“Be patient, and I will tell you. I am sorry to bring him again to your mind, but it is right that you should know the end. He is dead.”
“Dead!”
“Yes; died as he lived; murdered by the hand of the girl he had betrayed. They are lying side by side near the home of her childhood.”
Scott looked thoughtfully down at the grave of his wife. There was a hungry look in his eyes, as he raised them, again to Miss Elsworth’s face.
“Poor girl,” he said.
“Mr. Wilmer, I am sorry, very sorry, that your life has been so clouded,” said Miss Elsworth, “but if you 296 can bury the past it will be so much better for you. You have your mother and a lovely sister, and wealth to satisfy every desire.”