He paused with his hand over his eyes as though to shut out the sight of her, she was so beautiful as she stood there––so appealing. The dark eyes were wells of sadness as she looked at him. She stood as one waiting judgment and hoping for no mercy.
“You have punished me for a thing that was not my fault,” he continued. “I destroyed it––the accursed paper, and––”
“And by destroying it you gave me back to the Loring estate,” she said, quietly. All the passion had burned itself out; she spoke wearily and without emotion. “That is, I have become again, the property of my half sister, my father’s daughter! Are the brutal possibilities of your social institution so very far in the past?”
He could only stare at her; the horror of it was all too sickening, and that man who was dying in the other room had caused it all; he had moved them as puppets in the game of life, a malignant Fate, who had made all this possible.
“Now, will you go?” she asked, pleadingly. “You may trust me now; I have told you all.”
But he did not seem to hear her; only that one horrible thought of what she was to him beat against his brain and dwarfed every other consideration.
“And you––married me, knowing this?”
“I married you because I knew it,” she said, despairingly. “I thought you and Matthew Loring equally guilty––equally deserving of punishment. I fought against my own feelings––my own love for you––”
“Love!”