At first those who beheld refused to believe the evidence of their own senses. It did not seem possible that one and the same man could have filled both characters.
But they were forced to believe in time. And now Percy Maitland knew what it was in the looks of Ralph Tryon that had so puzzled and perplexed him from the first.
CHAPTER XVIII.
MARGERY’S REVELATION—CONCLUSION.
The aged earl, when he had come to a realizing sense of the horror of the situation, sank back with a groan of the deepest, bitterest agony, and covered his face with his hands as though to shut from his sight the terrible thing before him.
And then arose the voice of the pirate, coarse, brutal and cruel, even though the hand of death lay heavily upon him.
“Oho! my dear grandpapa! You will have a happy thought—a beautiful, blissful memory—through the remnant of your life. Your own hand took your grandson’s life!”
“Oh, Heaven have mercy!” the stricken old man groaned. “It needed but this to fill the cup of my misery to the brim!”
“Aye,” pursued the wretch, with a withering sneer, “and you killed me to save the beggarly life of a smuggler’s brat! Oho! may the memory give you joy! Oh, I am burning up!”
“Dear, dear grandpa!” Cordelia exclaimed, hastening to her guardian’s side and winding her arms about his neck. “Oh, do not notice him. Look to us who love you, and who—”