The two women stood in the bleak twilight looking at each other—Agnes with piteous, imploring eyes, Kate dazed and hopelessly bewildered.
"My brother's wife!" she repeated. "You! Agnes Darling!"
"Oh, dear Miss Danton, have pity on me! Let me see him. Let me tell him I am innocent, and that I love him with my whole heart. Don't cast me off! Don't despise me! Indeed, I am not the guilty creature he thinks me!"
"Agnes, wait," Kate said, holding out her hand. "I am so confounded by this revelation that I hardly know what to do or say. Tell me how you found out my brother was here? Did you know it when you came?"
"Oh, no. I came as seamstress, with a lady from New York to Canada, and when I left her I lived in the Petite Rue de St. Jacques. There you found me; and I came here, never dreaming that I was to live in the same house with my lost husband."
"And how did you make the discovery? Did you see him?"
"Yes, Miss Danton; the night you were all away at the party, you remember. I saw him on the stairs, returning to his room. I thought then it was a spirit, and I fainted, as you know, and Doctor Danton was sent for, and he told me it was no spirit, but Harry himself."
"Doctor Danton!" exclaimed Kate, in unbounded astonishment. "How did Doctor Danton come to know anything about it?"
"Why, it was he—oh, I haven't told you. I must go back to that dreadful night when my cousin was shot. As I told you, the room was filled with people, and among them there was a young man—a Doctor, he told us—who made them lift poor Will on the bed, and proceeded to examine his wound. It was not fatal."
She stopped, for Kate had uttered a cry and grasped her arm.