She glanced again—swift, keen, sidelong, a glance of diabolical triumph—at the prisoner. But he did not see it, he only heard the words—the words that seemed burning to the core of his heart.
This, then, was the secret, and the wife he had loved and doubted and scorned had been true to him as truth itself; and now he knew her worth and purity and high honor when it was too late.
"How came Mr. Parmalee to be possessed of the secret? Was he a relative?"
"No. He learned the story by the merest accident. He left New York for England in his professional capacity as photographic artist, on speculation. On board the steamer was a woman—a steerage passenger—poor, ill, friendless, and alone. He had a kindly heart, it appears, under his passion for money-making, and when this woman—this Mrs. Denover—fell ill, he nursed her as a son might. One night, when she thought herself dying, she called him to her bedside and told him her story."
Clear and sweet Sybilla Silver's voice rang from end to end, each word cutting mercilessly through the unhappy prisoner's very soul.
"Her maiden name had been Maria Denover, and she was a native of New York City. At the age of eighteen an English officer met her while on a visit to Niagara, fell desperately in love with her, and married her out of hand.
"Even at that early age she was utterly lost and abandoned; and she only married Captain Hunsden in a fit of mad desperation and rage because John Thorndyke, her lover, scornfully refused to make her his wife.
"Captain Hunsden took her with him to Gibraltar, where his regiment was stationed, serenely unconscious of his terrible disgrace. One year after a daughter was born, but neither husband nor child could win this woman from the man she passionately loved.
"She urged her husband to take her back to New York to see her friends; she pleaded with a vehemence he could not resist, and in an evil hour he obeyed.
"Again she met her lover. Three weeks after the wronged husband and all the world knew the revolting story of her degradation. She had fled with Thorndyke."