“I do not.”
“And you did not, the day before being paid that burglarious visit, write a letter to her?”
“How could I when I did not even know that she was alive?”
The detective smiled with triumph, while a great look of relief spread over his face.
Nick’s next step was to acquaint his old friend with the fact that he would find his wife and daughter at his home.
Nick said:
“Wife and daughter!”
He had no hesitation now in saying the latter, for Helen Doane stood proven as an innocent party in a dark transaction. And yet the circumstantial evidence against her was sufficient to have convicted her.
It is needless for us to go into details of the happy meeting that followed between the members of the reunited family, of how Mr. Field begged for forgiveness, and was forgiven; of how his wife proved that she still loved him; of how happy they were in having found so good and true a daughter; of how they lived so happily afterward in each other’s society.
Helen Field, as she now was known, explained to Mr. Barnes on a subsequent occasion how it was that, being of a somewhat romantic turn of mind, and feeling that the service done her by Lorton was of signal value, she had determined to place her life at his disposal in return for having, as she painted it, saved it for her. It was this that had led her to refusing Barnes’ suit.