“A year later, when you basely fled, leaving me, the mother of your two months’ old helpless girl to face the employers whom you had robbed in your hidden speculations, then, only then, I learned of your double life in New York. I knew that I was the innocent hostage of purity and honor. The screen of your dearest vices.”
Garston groaned as the voice rose high in its scorn and Elaine Willoughby stood before him, with outstretched arm, an angel with a flaming sword, at the shut gates of his Lost Paradise.
“Where you fled to I knew not—I cared not, for, with young blood and a loving heart, I might even have shared the fate of a bold sinner.
“But a sneaking coward must learn that woman’s heart condones not poltrooning nor meanness!
“You would now hold the dead past over my head—trumpet to the world your own story!” she cried. “I can easily confirm it. I have kept all your letters—the story of your crime, the papers and vouchers which were found in your New York room.
“Your letters of egoistic love, your later whining apologies from your unknown Western haunt. And armed with these, I could chase James Garston from the Senate.”
The suffering man sprang up. “Not so. I have a right to my name. I legally changed it years ago. The bank is long years out of existence; there is also the limitation of the past years. No one would believe you.”
His voice was broken with helpless tears now.
“Look at me! look at me!” the splendid woman proudly cried. “Dare any man say that my life has been a lie? Hear my story.
“Starvation, cold charity or the ignominy of helpless dependence was all you left me. I put our babe away. I went out a toiler into the world. As a school teacher I drifted away to the far West, and only changed my name. I left our home to avoid the honest love of good men who would have married me for pity’s sake. For men were good to the shamed widowed Margaret Cranstoun.