“I mean,” the wretched woman returned, in a voice of despair, while she sank weekly back into her chair, “that the secret which you have kept concealed from me during all our married life cannot compare with what I have withheld from you; you simply hid the fact of an earlier marriage and the existence of a son, while I committed a monstrous crime to conceal a like secret from you.”
“Good heavens, Estelle!” cried her husband, starting back from her with a look of horror at her appalling statement. “I cannot believe it,” and he, too, sank into the nearest chair, overcome with consternation, and actually trembling with dread of what was to follow.
Again he looked suspiciously at August Huntress, while a hundred thoughts flashed through his brain.
He fully believed that he must have been connected in some way with the crime of which his wife spoke.
Had she married him clandestinely, timing those early years while he had been away in the mines of New Mexico, and then deserted him to wed the other half of Jabez Mapleson’s fortune and preserve her own? Had they met and loved each other in their youth? Was that the reason why Estelle had been so indifferent to all other suitors; why she had told him she had “not much heart to give him,” when he had asked her to marry him? She had called him “August Damon” when brought face to face with him, in a tone which betrayed that she had everything to fear from his presence there, and she confirmed this by fainting at his feet.
But there were only sorrow and compassion written on Mr. Huntress’ face as he witnessed the proud woman’s humiliation; there was no vestige of any latent affection, no anger or harshness, such as there would have been if she had wronged him or played him false; there was no look, save one of regret and sympathy, as for one who, he knew, had committed some great sin that had at last found her out and must be atoned for.
“What does she mean? Do you know?” Colonel Mapleson asked, huskily, as his visitor—perchance feeling the magnetism of his glance—turned his eyes from the bowed form of Mrs. Mapleson to the mystified husband.
“I—know something, but not all,” he answered, reluctantly.
“Then you have met my wife before?”
“Once, and only once, as I have already told you.”