"Would I? Well, perhaps so, though my heart is rather a hard one. Of course I don't understand a word of all this—of course, as he said in his letter, some secret of guilt and shame lies behind it all. And yet, perhaps, I could come nearer to the 'Secret' than either you or he think."
Lady Helena looked suddenly up, that terrified, hunted look in her eyes.
"What do you mean?" she gasped.
"This," the firm, cold voice of Edith said, as Edith's bright, dark eyes fixed themselves pitilessly upon her, "this, Lady Helena Powyss: That the secret which takes him from me is the secret of his mother's murder—the secret which he learned at his father's deathbed. Shall I tell you who committed that murder?"
Her ladyship's lips moved, but no sound came; she sat spellbound, watching that pale, fixed face before her.
"Not Inez Catheron, who was imprisoned for it; not Juan Catheron, who was suspected of it. I am a Yankee, Lady Helena, and consequently clever at guessing. I believe that Sir Victor Catheron, in cold blood, murdered his own wife!"
There was a sobbing cry—whether at the shock of the terrible words, or at their truth, who was to tell?
"I believe the late Sir Victor Catheron to have been a deliberate and cowardly murderer," Edith went on; "so cowardly that his weak brain turned when he saw what he had done and thought of the consequences; and that he paid the penalty of his crime in a life of insanity. The motive I don't pretend to fathom—jealousy of Juan Catheron perhaps; and on his dying bed he confessed all to his son."
With face blanched and eyes still full of terror, her ladyship looked at the dark, contemptuous, resolute speaker.
"And if this be true—your horrible surmise; mind, I don't admit that it is—would that be any excuse for Victor's conduct in leaving you?"