"My soul!" exclaimed the unhappy prisoner to himself. "Bonnibel was there; she at least knew my innocence, yet she spoke no word to clear me from that most foul aspersion! And yet I could have sworn that she loved me as her own life. Oh, God! She was falser than I could have dreamed. But, oh, that angel face; those beguiling lips—how can they cover a heart so black?"
"Come, come, mon ami, don't give up like this," said Carl, distressed by the sight of his friend's uncontrollable emotion. "It is a monstrous thing, I know, and will involve no end of time and worry before you get clear, of course, but, then, there is no doubt of your getting off—you have only to prove your innocence, and you can easily do that, you know. So let's take it as a joke, and bear it bravely. Do you know I mean to cross the ocean with you, and see the farce played out to the end? Then you shall take me around, and do the honors of your native land."
Leslie looked at the bright, buoyant face of the German artist as he spoke so cheerily, and a suspicious moisture crept into his dark eyes. He dashed his hand across them, deeming it unmanly weakness.
"Oh! Carl," he exclaimed, remorsefully, "how little I have valued your friendship, yet how firm and noble it has proved itself in this dark and trying hour! Forgive me, my friend, and believe me when I say that I give you the sole affection and trust of a heart that heretofore has trusted nothing of human kind, so basely had it been deceived. I thank, I bless you for that promise to stand by me in my trial! And now I will do what I should have done long ago if I had known the value of your noble heart. I will tell you my story, and you shall be my judge."
Word for word, though it gave him inexpressible pain to recall it, he went over the story of his love for Bonnibel Vere, and her uncle's rejection of his suit, and the high words that passed between them. He passed lightly over their farewell, omitting but one thing. It was the story of their moonlight sail and secret marriage. That story was sealed within his breast. He would have died before he would have revealed Bonnibel's fatal secret to any living soul.
"I left Cape May, where they were summering, on the midnight train," he concluded, "and the next day I sailed from New York for Europe. I never heard from Francis Arnold or his niece again. She had promised to be faithful to our love, but though I wrote to her many times I never received one line in return until that fatal note which you remember. In it she wrote me that she loved another."
"Perfidious creature!" muttered Carl.
"I never heard of her again," continued Leslie, "until, to my unutterable surprise, I met her as the wife of Colonel Carlyle."
"And it is for one so false and cruel that you rest under this dreadful charge," exclaimed the German. "But, please God, you will soon be cleared from it. Of course you will have no difficulty in proving an alibi. That is all you need to clear you."