She was dizzy and her brain reeled. She felt like a weak swimmer in a strong sea swept away by the relentless and treacherous undertow.
In the momentary silence that followed their cries of recognition, Ernest Noel continued earnestly:
“This lady is my wife, but I do not charge her with attempted bigamy. She believed me dead.”
“Explain!” thundered Frank Laurier, thrilled with chivalrous pity for the drooping figure that clutched his arm with frantic hands.
Ernest Noel bowed gravely, and said:
“Two years ago I was frantic with love for Miss Ellyson and tried to win her from you, Frank Laurier. We two were the principals in a mock marriage at some charitable affair, and in my desperation I made the ceremony a real one, taking out the necessary license and securing a young minister, Mr. Kincaid, to officiate. Some time afterward I ventured to confess to my bride the imposition I had practiced on her and was met by such indignant reproaches that I was driven to—suicide!
“Disappointed in my love, I sprang into a deep pit to end my life, but the fall did not kill me. I lingered on in agony till the next day, when this man with me, Carey Doyle, discovered and rescued me from my perilous situation, taking me to the home of some country friends of his, where I was cared for many months ere fully restored to myself.
“It was rumored that I had mysteriously disappeared, and the report of my suicide was accepted as correct. Carey Doyle, for the sake of a whim, kept the secret of my identity, and so for many months I remained as one dead to the world that formerly knew me; while regaining my consciousness at last I learned that Cora had been almost fatally burned and would be the inmate of a hospital perhaps for years. In despair I forswore all former associations, and no one but the executors of my property were informed of my continued existence, while I brooded miserably over my faults and the wreck I had made of my own life, my selfish passion and reckless folly. I determined never to return to the world, but this morning Carey Doyle came to tell me that I must save Cora from bigamy by forbidding her contemplated marriage with another.”
Cora and Doyle at that moment exchanged malevolent glances, and she understood all.
In the beginning the wretch had concealed the fact of Noel’s continued existence that he might more effectually pursue his scheme of blackmail.