“I have his first wife’s written confession, in which she told all, and how her parents had told her not to speak of her love affair with you, as he was rich, you were not, having squandered much of your fortune in fast living. Her name was Dorothy Armand, and she left her confession with her jewelry and other things that my father placed in my mother’s keeping, and all of which she left to me.”
“Yes, her name was Dorothy Armand, as you say; but she deceived me, and I would not believe her dying confession, or take my brother’s word, either, for they wronged me, and I never forgive a wrong.”
“But my father never did you a wrong, whatever his wife did in deceiving him as to her engagement to you,” said Lucille warmly.
“His name is Louis Fallon Lamar, and he was a colonel in the Confederate army, as I have said, and a Texan ranchero. He got me exchanged, I admit, and gave me money; but that did not atone for the past, and I hated him, for even in war he beat me, as he rose to be a colonel of cavalry, I only a captain of infantry.
“He had married again, he told me, and had a daughter, but I was glad to feel that he was ruined by the war. What became of him then I never knew until I recognized him as a soldier in the United States army, and only a sergeant.
“Then I remembered that I had heard that a Southerner of our name had killed a man in the East, and had fled to escape the gallows.
“I wrote East, got the particulars, and found that it was my brother Louis. I have only hoped to capture him that I might send him back as a fugitive from justice to be hanged.”
Lucille’s eyes flashed fire, and for a moment she did not speak. Then she said:
“Let me ask you to look me in the eyes while I tell you what I know about what you have told me of my father.”
“I am listening.”