He spoke hurriedly:
"Ralph Chainey is coming, Fedora! Quick! lock the girl in, and come out and meet him alone. I must not be seen yet."
Fedora obeyed him, and Kathleen, coming back to life with a shuddering gasp, found herself alone, locked in, and heard outside the voice of her lover, and the words spoken held her spell-bound.
"Kathleen? Where is Kathleen? She told me to meet her here."
With a hissing laugh of savage hate, Fedora flung off the hood that she wore and stood revealed, scarred, hideous, gray-haired, but Fedora still—the woman who held his honor in her light keeping and bore his name.
"Kathleen is dead!" she laughed. "Dead, and I killed her without a blow! My weapon was a lie. It slew her as fatally as a dagger!"
He could not speak. He could only stare at her in dumb horror as she continued:
"Do you see these diamonds flashing in my ears? They are the ones that were stolen from Kathleen Carew the night of the attempted murder, when you found and saved her at Lincoln Station. I told her that you, my husband, did that foul deed, and robbing her of her money and jewels, brought them to me. A fiendish lie, you say? Ha! ha! but it killed her, all the same. Do you want to know the real thief? It was Ivan Belmont, my lover; and she was slain by a lie!"
Kathleen had struggled with difficulty to her feet. She tottered to the little window that looked into the mill; she saw her noble lover's handsome face, and uttered a piercing cry: