“Plover!” echoed Clide and Mr. Simpson.
“The same, at your service,” replied the other with cool effrontery. Then, turning to Clide, he said:
“Can I see you alone? What we have got to say had better be said privately.”
Clide made a gesture of assent, and the doctor showed them into an adjoining room.
The outline of Mr. Prendergast’s confession is already known; it is only necessary to fill it up with a few details of interest. Isabel was not his own niece, but the step-niece of his wife by her first husband, an Italian singer, from whom the girl inherited her gift of song. She was thrown on the care of Mr. Prendergast when quite a child. He was a needy adventurer, and determined to make her voice useful; for this end he cultivated it to the highest degree. But there was madness in her family. Just as her musical education was complete, and she was preparing to come out on a provincial stage in Italy, her mind became deranged, and he was obliged to place her in an obscure lunatic asylum near Milan. Meanwhile, he travelled as agent to a large London firm, and saw a great deal of life, chiefly in the West Indies. On his return he found Isabel recovered and in splendid voice. Complete change and travelling were advised as the best means of strengthening her against the danger of a relapse. He took her to America; then followed her marriage and her flight. Whether
the fraud that she had practised on Clide was entirely a deliberate falsehood, prompted by that strange cunning which is one of the characteristics of madness, or whether it was the delusion of a disordered brain, it signified little now to him; it was certain that she had become fully alive to the fact that she had grossly deceived her husband, and that discovery would ruin her. Rather than face it, she fled and threw herself on her uncle for pity and protection. Then followed the checkered life: now the glare of the footlights, now the obscurity of a lunatic asylum. It had been her own passionate desire to go on the stage—so Mr. Prendergast said—and he had only yielded to it because he saw there was no other course open to her. Her terror of her husband’s anger was so great that the idea of being discovered by him threw her into a state of despair which threatened to unsettle her brain beyond all chance of recovery. She had caught a glimpse of him from her window at Dieppe, and insisted on her uncle’s carrying her off that very night, or else she would commit suicide. The excitement of the stage soon brought on a return of madness. Prendergast locked her up and went abroad again on a commission; fell in with Russian Jews on the borders of China, bought valuable stones from them, and returned to fulfil the dream of his life: to buy a country place and live “like a gentleman.” He found Isabel again recovered, and with her voice in greater power than ever. The offer of a fabulous sum for one season from a manager who had long had his eye on the beautiful young soprano tempted her uncle; he accepted an engagement for her at St. Petersburg. A London milliner who
knew her slightly and had business of her own there accompanied them as a sort of chaperon for Isabel. Stanton had recognized her at the hotel, and she him. The rest of the story was already known to Clide. Mr. Prendergast was very emphatic, however, in declaring that he never intended to keep the poor child on the stage; this one season was so magnificently paid for that the sum, added to his own means, would make them both wealthy for the remainder of their lives.
“And now I have made a clean breast of it; you know everything,” he said, bringing his narrative to a close.
“No, not everything,” replied Mr. de Winton, fixing a searching look on him. “You have not explained the motives of your own conduct throughout. You changed your name twice; you persistently avoided me; you had recourse to unworthy subterfuges to escape detection. Admitting that my poor wife was, as you say, too frightened to trust me or to let me know what she was doing, it was your duty to communicate with me, and to give me at least the option of providing for her, instead of compelling her to foster the disease that was destroying her by adopting the career of an actress. What motive had you for not doing this? I give you the choice of telling the truth yourself; if you refuse, I must take other means of finding it out.”
Mr. Prendergast hesitated. There was evidently something yet to be told which he shrank from avowing; but, as Clide intimated, he must either confess it of his own accord or be driven to do so.