* * * * *
Victor Carrington appeared at Hilton House early in the afternoon. He had calculated that his work must needs be very near its completion, and he came prepared to hear of Douglas Dale's mortal illness.
The blow that awaited him was a death-blow. Miss Brewer had told Douglas all: the lies, the artifices, by which the man Carton had contrived to make himself a constant visitor in that house. In a moment, without the mention of the schemer's real name, Heaven's light was let in upon the mystery; the dark enigma was solved, and the woman, so tenderly loved and so cruelly wronged, was exonerated.
Too late—too late! That was the agonizing reflection which smote the heart of Douglas Dale, with a pain more terrible than the sharpest death-pang. "I have broken her heart!" he cried. "I have broken that true, devoted heart!"
The appearance of Victor Carrington was the signal for such a burst of rage as even his iron nature could scarcely brook unshaken.
"Miscreant! devil! incarnate iniquity!" cried Douglas, as he grasped and grappled with the baffled plotter. "You have tried to murder me—and you have tried to murder her! I might have forgiven you the first crime—I will drag you to the halter for the second, and think myself poorly revenged when I hear the rabble yelling beneath your scaffold!"
Happily for Carrington, the effects of the poison had reduced his victim to extreme weakness. The convulsive grasp loosened, the hoarse voice died into a whisper, and Douglas Dale swooned as helplessly as a woman.
"What does it mean?" asked Victor. "Is this man mad?"
"We have all been mad!" returned Miss Brewer, passionately. "The blind, besotted dupes of your demoniac wickedness! Paulina Durski is dead!"
"Dead!"