"It refers to certain chemical experiments in which my friend and I are interested. It is the very letter, almost word for word, which I made up my mind to write to him the first thing after breakfast this morning.. And yet I slept last night at the Cot, while you found this an hour or more ago at the Towers!"
Again the eyes of the two met in pregnant silence.
"Rodd, you must have guessed the truth?"
"I have, Felix." "Yes, no other explanation is possible. Yet it seems monstrous--unbelievable. And by my hand! Oh!"
He ended with a groan, turned his face aside, and was silent. For once this man, usually so proudly self-centered, so stoically self-repressed, was moved to the depths of his soul as never in his life before.
Crossing to him, Roden Marsh grasped one of his hands in both his own.
"Felix, between you and me not a word more is needed--I comprehend. You have suffered. Your life has been made a burden almost too bitter to be borne. I have seen and known it for long. I have suffered with your sufferings; my heart has bled for you times without number. I can speak now; hitherto I have had to look on and be dumb."
"Yes, you have seen something--perchance much; but you know no more than your eyes have shown you, whatever you may have guessed. Of the details of her treachery--hers, Rodd--which was black as hell, you know nothing. Sit you there and listen. The tale shall be told, now and here, from beginning to end."
Roden seated himself on the fallen trunk, while Drelincourt, pacing slowly back and forth, half a dozen yards this way and as many that, began his narrative.
"You will not have forgotten that about three years ago Colonel Fenwicke and his niece were staying with the Ormsbys at Denham Lodge, where I was an occasional visitor. I had met Madeline Fenwicke abroad in the course of the previous summer, and had fallen in love with her; but at that time I was comparatively a poor man, and marriage was not to be thought of. In the interim my father had died, and I had succeeded to the entail. There was no longer any reason why I should keep silent. It was in this very glade, Rodd--here--here--that I met my darling and told her my secret! It was here her lips touched mine in love's first kiss. O Heaven! To think of all that has happened between then and now!"