“I am listening, sir.”
“Since that night that—that——”
“Let me complete your sentence; since the night you saw me raise to my lips the fatal drug you had prepared for me, you have been haunted by a phantom.”
“Yes, Kate, and bitterly have I been punished for that crime. I was mad then, for I knew that you loved me, and I loved you more than all else in the world; but I owed large gambling and others debts, and had no money to pay them with. I had an opportunity to marry an heiress, who was to turn over into my keeping her vast wealth.
“My marriage to you was a secret one, and none knew of it, and, driven to desperation by my debts, I one night prepared two glasses with poison, intending that you should drink the one and I the other, and we would die together.
“Coward that I was, I saw you drink the fatal draft, though I touched not my lips to mine; and before I could summon aid you were, as I believed, dead. Oh, Kate! No one knows my misery then. In terror I fled and sought a refuge amid wild scenes and wilder men.”
“Have you told me all the truth, Kenton Kingsland?” she asked in a low, stern tone.
As if determined to hide no atom of his guilt, he continued:
“No, Kate, not all; for, possessing, as you know, a strange power of imitation, I wrote a note, copying your hand, and saying that you were tired of living and had ended your own life.”
“I have that note with me, sir.”