“And you, whom I thought the soul of honor, beyond the power of being bought by sordid gold, wedded this girl for the Dinsmore millions!” cried Queenie, bitterly.
He looked at her reproachfully, and his firm lips quivered ever so slightly. The accusation was galling to him.
“No,” he said, sharply; “not so. Fate, if there indeed be such a condition, forged link after link of the chain, and I was”—he was going to add—“drawn into it,” but he bit his lip savagely, keeping back the words. But Queenie’s quick wit supplied just what he withheld.
After a brief pause he continued:
“I was on my way down South to tell the girl that the wedding could never take place, when that railway accident occurred which held me prisoner, as it were, at the farm of the Caldwells for many weeks. Not wishing the information to get into the newspapers, I gave those good people the name of Moore. Imagine my amazement when fate, as I call it again, brought the girl, Jess, to that very farmhouse.”
“And you fell in love with her and married her out of hand?” broke in Queenie again, trembling with agitation.
“Again you are in error,” he retorted, with a deep-drawn sigh. “Looking on the girl, I pitied her, for the reason that my failure to fall in love with and wed her would cost her one-half of the Dinsmore fortune, just as it would cost me the other half. My action would make her homeless, penniless. The more I brooded over that the more I pitied her, and one day a path out of the dilemma seemed to suddenly open out before me. Something seemed to say to me: ‘Why not marry the girl, and thus secure the fortune to her which should be hers?’
“At first my heart rebelled at the notion, but the more I turned it over in my mind, the more it seemed my solemn duty to do so. I put the plan into execution at once, lest my resolution should fail me, and still calling myself Mr. Moore, I asked Jess to marry me, and her answer was ‘yes.’
“I meant to tell her who I was after the marriage ceremony, and add ‘now that I have secured to you the fortune that is yours through my uncle’s desire, I leave it with you to fulfill your marriage vows, or bid me depart,’ and to also tell her that I intended to make over my share of the Dinsmore millions to her.
“Before we reached the farmhouse again, after the marriage, which I need scarcely add was a secret one, I exacted a promise from the lips of Jess that she would not reveal what had taken place until I gave her permission to do so.