“Lucille,” he said brokenly, “you have not treated me altogether well; you have done your best to keep my wife and me apart; you have wantonly abducted my only son, my little Ronny; you have had me shut up in a lunatic asylum; I strongly suspect that you know more than you should about the fire which occasioned the total loss of the Danic, and all but a small percentage of her crew and passengers—and yet—and yet, Lucille, I cannot but think that you still retain a lingering spark of true womanliness somewhere, in spite of all! By that spark, I adjure you solemnly, to tell me, as you hope for mercy, whether you did or did not write that letter signed ‘One who knows the truth’?”
“I did,” she answered, “I do know it. I have come here with the full intention of telling it.”
“And you can clear Fenella?” asked Frank. “Then I forgive you freely all the wrong you have done—only speak, Lucille, tell me all at once, keep me no longer in suspense!”
“Wait,” she said calmly and almost soothingly, “are you quite sure that you can bear to know the truth?”
“Sure?” he exclaimed, “if only Fenella did not stab the count, what care I what other hand dealt the fatal blow?”
Lucille de Vigny smiled, a dark and mystic smile, as she said slowly, “Not even if the hand should prove to be your own?”
Frank Onslow fell back with blue and writhing lips. “It is a lie,” he said hoarsely, “a cruel lie!”
“It is the truth, my poor Frank; I can prove it.”
Now, as has been already stated, this was mere conjecture on her part. In spite of the assertion in her letter, she had not been in the corridor of the Prospect Hotel when the tragic occurrence had taken place. On the contrary, she had been, perhaps, the most perplexed by Frank’s disappearance the next morning. It was only subsequently that her feminine intuition had supplied a partial solution of the mystery. However, her shot told with terrible effect.
“Prove it!” he repeated incredulously. “Why, after I had seen the count enter Fenella’s room, I went straight to my own; I sat up in a stupor till daylight, I did indeed, Lucille!”