“You shall know the reason I have for being an enemy to the woman you call mother,” he said. “You shall know why Evelyn Hilton speaks of me as her enemy and yours. Twenty years ago I was not the man you see before you to-day. I was young and hopeful and tender-hearted.
“It is true I had been led into bad company, and had allowed myself to be drawn into temptation; but when I met the girl whom it was my fate to love, I swore to overcome all this temptation and to live a life I need not be ashamed to ask her to share.
“She was a poor girl, and married me; not because she loved me, but for the reason that my father was a wealthy man, and she hoped to live a luxurious life as the wife of his only son and heir.
“In this she was disappointed, for in the very hour in which he learned that I had made Evelyn Hardress my wife, he disinherited me, and, dying two months later, left all his wealth to the endowment of a charitable institution, cutting me off with the mocking bequest of one dollar.
“Had I been alone the sufferer, I would not have felt this injustice so bitterly; but my young wife was passionately fond of the luxuries wealth alone could buy, and as I still loved her passionately, it almost killed me to be obliged to deny her anything for which she craved.
“At last I was obliged to tell her the truth; and from that hour my nature changed, until from the weak, extravagant, but foolishly fond boy of twenty years ago, you see me the bitter, vengeful man of to-day.
“You shrink from me still, and your heart clings to the woman who gave you birth; but you can never know what agony I endured for that woman’s sake.
“A distant relative of my father offered me at this time a position as cashier in his bank, and my acceptance of this offer sealed my doom. My wife was dearer to me than any consideration of honor, and when she threw herself weeping on my breast, lamenting that she could not attend a party to which she had been invited because of her inability to dress as richly as she had been used to do, I committed my first crime. I appropriated one thousand dollars of the money intrusted to my care, and gave it to her for her personal adornment. I saw her decked in the robes purchased at the sacrifice of my honor. I knew that I had become a thief for her sake, and yet I gloried in her peerless beauty, and never loved her as passionately as on that night when I heard her spoken of as the most beautiful woman in all that crowded assemblage.
“It was not love I felt for her, but a blind infatuation that led me on to repeat my first crime time and again, until from very terror of detection I determined to quit the country. Evelyn encouraged me in this determination, until, just one day previous to that on which I was to have taken my departure for Europe, where I hoped to earn the wherewithal to repay the large sums I had purloined, I was arrested on the charge of forgery, a check having been presented at the bank bearing the signature of one of our wealthiest depositors, but written in a hand that was instantly recognized as my own.
“I could almost have sworn it myself to be my own handwriting, so perfect and faultless was the imitation; but after the first shock of this awful accusation was over I recognized it as the work of my wife, who had often boasted of her talent in copying the handwriting of any person whose penmanship she had ever studied.