"No," the figure said. "No. Not Douglas. Archibald."
[CHAPTER XX.]
AVENGED.
He had fallen grovelling to the earth as that figure turned its face towards him, and now he remained in the same position.
As he did so Archibald Sholto knew for certain that he had found his brother's murderer. In the moment of witnessing that frenzied terror there had flashed into his mind the knowledge of who had been the wearer of the tiara with the one yellow-brown diamond in it; the recognition of the dark head streaked with grey with which his thoughts had been filled for weeks, yet without certainty--the head of the murderer's late mother! He knew all now. She it was who had worn the diadem in the great ceremonies he had taken part in; the rejoicings at the peace of '38, the almost equally great rejoicings at the death of the Emperor Charles, and many others. She, Lady Fordingbridge, his mother, had worn it often; often had he observed the strange light emitted by that blemished jewel; and now, from the tiara in which it still remained, a ruby was missing, and had been found on the spot where his brother had been done to death. Therefore he knew that that brother's assassin was before him. God had given him into his hands.
He bent forward over the crouching creature at his feet; in a low voice he said:
"So, I have found you, Simeon Larpent. Even though you are armed to-night as you were on that other night; even though you bear about you the weapon with which you slew him, you cannot escape me."
"You can do nothing," the other said, turning up an evil eye at him and then rising to his feet--"nothing! Your tongue is sealed. What I confessed was under the sanctity of the confessional; you dare tell naught."
At once the Jesuit's clear mind grasped the facts--at once he perceived that the murderer had been cleansing his soul before a confessor--and thought that he was that confessor.
"I told you all," Fordingbridge went on, "all, all. And you absolved me, pardoned me, though the punishment you meted out to me was hard. Have you not vengeance enough? To go forth a beggar and an outcast--to wander in savage lands until I die--surely, surely, that is enough. Let me go in peace."