"Yes, Ida," he said, rising from his seat and standing before her, while he knew that the time had come now when everything must be told. "Yes, he had one relation!"
"Who was he?" she asked, springing to her feet, while a strange lustre shone in her eyes. "Who was he? Tell me that."
"Oh, Ida," he said, "there is so much to tell! Will you hear me patiently while I tell you all?"
"Tell me everything," she replied. "I will listen."
Then he told her, standing there face to face with her. As he proceeded with his story, he could give no guess as to what effect it was having upon her, for she made no sign, but, from the seat into which she had sunk, gazed fixedly into his face. Once she shuddered slightly, and drew her dress nearer to her when he confessed that he had refused to part from him in peace; and, when she had read the letter that he had written on the night of his death, she wept silently for a few moments.
It had taken long in the telling, and the twilight of the summer night had come before he finished and she had learnt everything.
"That is what I came to tell you, Ida. Speak to me, and say that you forgive me for having kept it from your knowledge when last we met!"
"You said an hour ago," she replied, taking no heed of his prayer for forgiveness, "that dreams were idle fantasies of the brain. What if mine was such? What, if after all, I have seen the form of the man who murdered him, have spoken to him and let him kiss me, and have not recognised him?"
"Ida!" he said, "do you say this to me, to the man to whom you have plighted your love and faith? Do you mean that you suspect me of being my brother's murderer?"
"You did nothing," she answered, "to find out his murderer; you would have done nothing had that Will not been discovered."