'You must know, Dorkie, that before his sudden departure, Mark Wylder promised to lend William, his brother, a sum sufficient to relieve him of all his pressing debts.'
'Debts! I never knew before that he had any,' exclaimed Dorcas. 'Poor
William! I am so sorry.'
'Well, he has, like other fellows, only he can't get away as easily, and he has been very much pressed since Mark went, for he has not yet lent him a guinea, and in fact Rachel says she thinks he is in danger of being regularly sold out. She does not say she knows it, but only that she suspects they are in a great fix about money.'
'Well, you must know that I was the sole cause of Mark Wylder's leaving the country.'
'You, Stanley!'
'Yes, I, Dorkie. I believe I thought I was doing a duty; but really I was nearly mad with jealousy, and simply doing my utmost to drive a rival from your presence. And yet, without hope for myself, desperately in love.'
Dorcas looked down and smiled oddly; it was a sad and bitter smile, and seemed to ask whither has that desperate love, in so short a time, flown?
'I know I was right. He was a stained man, and was liable at any moment to be branded. It was villainous in him to seek to marry you. I told him at last that, unless he withdrew, your friends should know all. I expected he would show fight, and that a meeting would follow; and I really did not much care whether I were killed or not. But he went, on the contrary, rather quietly, threatening to pay me off, however, though he did not say how. He's a cunning dog, and not very soft-hearted; and has no more conscience than that,' and he touched his finger to the cold summit of a marble bust.
'He is palpably machinating something to my destruction with an influential attorney on whom I keep a watch, and he has got some fellow named Dutton into the conspiracy; and not knowing how they mean to act, and only knowing how utterly wicked, cunning, and bloody-minded he is, and that he hates me as he probably never hated anyone before, I must be prepared to meet him, and, if possible, to blow up that Satanic cabal, which without money I can't. It was partly a mystification about the election; of course, it will be expensive, but nothing like the other. Are you ill, Dorkie?'
He might well ask, for she appeared on the point of fainting.