"God, what a relief!" he exclaimed, his step growing more elastic. "She knew how she was torturing me, saw it in every word that I spoke; and I, fool that I was, was betrayed into weakness and cowardice by a woman whom I despise! I felt myself a criminal striving to avoid the accusation of my crime. I think if she had cried out: 'You are the guilty one! 'Twas your hand fired the shot that killed poor Olney Winthrop!' I would have sunk upon my knees and begged for mercy. Pouf! how all this cursed affair has upset me! I wonder if I shall ever be myself again? I wonder if I shall ever be able to shake off the influence of all these lies I have been forced to tell, and shall be forced to tell from this time henceforth? God! it's the old story retold of Adam and Eve, without the Garden of Eden. A woman's beautiful face makes cowards of us all. And I, who so despise a liar, who never told a lie in my life until—"
He did not complete the sentence, but flung up his head with a gesture of repugnance and abhorrence.
A slow, pitiless, scornful, malignant laugh fell from Jessica's lips as she heard the outer door close upon him. She got up, went to the window, and watched him as he disappeared down the street; then, quite as calmly as she had moved the day before, returned to the mantel and laid one hand upon it, while with the other she lifted her dress and placed her foot upon the fender before the fire. Then, after a pause:
"Why do you look at me in that uncanny sort of way?" she exclaimed, half fretfully to her mother, without even glancing in her direction. "You make me feel creepy all up and down my back. Why don't you say it out and have done with it?"
"Say—what out?" stammered Mrs. Chalmers, her voice as stiff, as heavy, as full of terror as her face.
"What you are thinking."
"I—I don't believe I—could. It seems to—me that I—must have been asleep—and had a—horrible nightmare. I—think I must have been—wondering—what you—thought."
Jessica lifted her head. In the mirror she saw leaning against the door-jamb a figure clothed all in black, the white hands crossed upon its breast as if to hush the wild throb of the passionate heart. The beautiful face looked deathly in its pallor. It was Carlita.
Jessica turned her eyes upon her mother as if she had not seen, then answered slowly, her voice vibrating with intense meaning:
"What I think of the murder of Olney Winthrop? You mean whom do I believe to be the murderer? I am quite sure there can not be two ideas upon that score. The ball that entered Olney Winthrop's heart was fired by the hand of Leith Pierrepont, none other!"