“Is it possible that you really believe it?” he exclaimed.
“So possible that, but for the scandal, I would do what I can not invoke the law to do, and exact life for life. And to crown all, I find you with my son’s wife—”
“Your son’s wife!” The cry burst from Sedgwick’s lips.
“—in the dead of night, at a rendezvous,” concluded Blair.
“That is a lie,” said Sedgwick very low, “for which I shall kill you if you dare repeat it even to your own thoughts. It was no rendezvous. Is your mind so vicious that you can’t believe in innocence? Stop and think! How could it have been a rendezvous, when I came here, as you know, for another purpose?”
“That is true,” said the other thoughtfully. “That still remains to be explained.”
“By you,” returned the artist. “You speak of your son’s wife. To carry out the farce of the sham burial, shouldn’t you have said his ‘widow’?”
“The widow of a day—as you well know,” answered Mr. Blair bitterly.
“As I do not know, at all. But I think I begin to see light. The rose-topazes on the dead woman’s neck. Her topazes. That helps to clear it up. The dead woman was some past light-o’-love of Wilfrid Blair’s. She came here either to reassert her sway over him or to blackmail him. He gave her his wife’s jewels. Then he followed her to the cliffs and killed her, perhaps in a drunken frenzy. And you, Mr. Alexander Blair, to save your son, have concealed him somewhere, bribed the sheriff and the medical officer, contrived this false death and burial, and are now turning suspicion on a man you know to be innocent further to fortify your position. But what damnable lie have you told her?”
During this exposition, Alexander Blair’s face was a study in changing emotions. At the close his thin lips curled in the suggestion of a sardonic grin.