“Good woman,” said he in Gaelic, “you have picked up a fortune. It would have saved me much tribulation, and yourself some extra work, if you had happened to pick it up a month ago!”
He hurried to Olivia.
“My dear,” he said, “I have come upon the oddest secret.”
His daughter reddened to the roots of her hair, and fell to trembling with inexplicable shame. He did not observe it.
“It is that you have got out of the grip of the gled. Yon person was an even blacker villain than I guessed.”
“Oh!” she said, apparently much relieved, “and is that your secret? I have no wonder left in me for any new display of wickedness from Simon MacTaggart.”
“Listen,” he said, and read her the damnatory document. She flushed, she trembled, she well-nigh wept with shame; but “Oh!” she cried at the end, “is he not the noble man?”
“The noble man!” cried Doom at such an irrelevant conclusion. “Are you out of your wits, Olivia?”
She stammered an explanation. “I do not mean—I do not mean—this—wretch that is exposed here, but Count Victor. He has known it all along.”
“H'm,” said Doom. “I fancy he has. That was, like enough, the cause of the duel. But I do not think it was noble at all that he should keep silent upon a matter so closely affecting the happiness of your whole life.”