He paused there.
“And they proved to be wrong,” I added.
“They might have proved to be right,” Rothsay rejoined, “but for the accident which spilled your medicine and the despair of yourself which decided you on taking no more.”
I could hardly believe that I understood him. “Do you assert,” I said, “that my medicine would have killed me, if I had taken the rest of it?”
“I have no doubt that it would.”
“Will you explain what you mean?”
“Let me have your explanation first. I was not prepared to find Susan in your room. I was surprised to see traces of tears in her face. Something has happened in my absence. Am I concerned in it?”
“You are.”
I said it quietly—in full possession of myself. The trial of fortitude through which I had already passed seemed to have blunted my customary sense of feeling. I approached the disclosure which I was now bound to make with steady resolution, resigned to the worst that could happen when the truth was known.
“Do you remember the time,” I resumed, “when I was so eager to serve you that I proposed to make Susan your wife by making her rich?”