"Proofs!" he repeats impatiently. "Great Heaven, boy, what surer proof could I give you than her own words? Read her confession again. You—you don't suppose it's a fraud? What motive could I have in forging the record of my dishonor?"
"I can't understand it, I can't understand it!"
"I can, and you will also, when I tell you that the villain, in my hearing, threatened to take his own life if she refused to listen to him. Judge the effect of such a threat on any one of her impulsive nature."
"I—I wish I had killed him that day I met him! Oh if I had only known, only guessed! Even now, Armstrong, I tell you I can not realize it—I can not! He was utterly penniless too; he asked me to lend him a five-pound note, and told me, if he could manage his passage-money, he would sail in the 'Chimborazo' for Melbourne on the seventeenth."
"He has managed his passage-money. Your sister got five hundred pounds from me last evening."
The words seemed to have slipped out unconsciously, for the deep flush of shame that spreads over Robert's face is reflected as warmly in the speaker's the same moment.
There is a pause, broken only by Robert's hot panting breath; then Armstrong speaks again.
"The 'Chimborazo,' you say? She sailed from Gravesend on the seventeenth, and takes in passengers at Plymouth two days later. To-day is—let me see—the nineteenth. Yes, they would be just in time, leaving here last night, to sail in her."
"Tom," says Robert, rising to his feet, "will you grant me a last request? Come with me now at once, and see if—if your suspicion is correct, if we can find any trace of them on board—I—I mean at the shipping-agents, among the list of cabin-passengers. Will you, will you?"
"Yes, my boy, if you like," he answers wearily. "But, if my suspicion is verified to-day, you must never allude to this subject again before me. I do not object to let you and yours continue to look on me as a friend, but you must forget henceforth that you ever called me brother-in-law."