As We Forgive Them

by William Le Queux

Anxiety consumed us, knowing not how Mabel had fared. Yet with the knowledge that the baneful influence of the adventurer Dawson had been now removed, we returned home somewhat easier in mind. I was wealthy, it was true, rich beyond my wildest dreams, yet the hope of the possession of Mabel as my wife, that had been the mainspring of my life, had been snapped, and in those pensive hours as the sleeping-car express tore northward across the plains of Lombardy and through Switzerland and France, my despairing thoughts were all of her and of her future.

A cab took us direct from Charing Cross to Great Russell Street, where I found a note from her dated from Grosvenor Square, asking me to call there on the instant of our return. This I did after a hasty wash, and Carter showed me unceremoniously and at once up to that big white-and-gold drawing-room so familiar to me.

In a few moments she entered, looking sweet and charming in her mourning, a smile upon her lips, her hand extended to me in glad welcome. Her face, I thought, betrayed a keen anxiety, and the pallor of her cheeks showed how sorely her heart was torn by grief and terror.

“Yes, Mabel, I am back again,” I said, holding her hand and gazing into her eyes. “I have discovered your father’s secret!”

“What?” she cried in eager surprise, “you have? Tell me what it is—do tell me,” she urged breathlessly.

I first obtained from her a promise of secrecy, and then, standing with her, I described our visit to the lonely hermit’s cell, our reception by the monk Antonio, and our subsequent discoveries.

She listened in blank amazement at my story of the hidden treasure of the Vatican, until I described the attack made upon me by Dawson, and its tragic sequel, whereupon she cried—

“Then if that man is dead—actually dead—I am free!”

“How? Explain!” I demanded.

“Well, now that circumstances have combined to thus liberate me, I will confess to you,” she responded after a brief pause. Her face had suddenly flushed and glancing across at the door, she first reassured herself that it was closed. Then in a deep, intense voice she said, looking straight into my face with those wonderful eyes of hers, “I have been the victim of a foul, base plot which I will explain, so that, knowing the whole truth, you may be able to judge how I have suffered, and whether I have not acted from a sense of right and duty. For devilish cunning and ingenuity the conspiracy against me surely has no equal, as you will see. I have only now succeeded in discovering the real truth and the deep hidden motive behind it all. My first meeting with Herbert Hales was apparently accidental, in Widemarsh Street, Hereford. I was only a girl just finishing my schooldays, and as full of romantic ideas concerning men as all girls are. I saw him often, and although I knew that he picked up a precarious living on race-courses, I allowed him to court me. At first I confess that I fell deeply in love with him, a fact which he did not fail to detect, and during that summer at Mayvill I met him secretly on many evenings in the park. After we had thus been acquainted about three months, he one night suggested that we should marry, but by that time, having detected that his love for me was only feigned, I refused. Evening after evening we met, but I steadfastly declined to marry him, until one night he showed himself in his true colours, for to my abject amazement he told me that he was well acquainted with my father’s life-story, and further he alleged that there was one dark incident connected with it—namely that my father, in order to possess himself of the secret by which he had gained his wealth, had murdered the Italian seaman, Pensi, on board the Annie Curtis off the Spanish coast. I refused to hear such a terrible allegation, but to my surprise he caused me to meet my father’s friend, the man Dawson, by appointment, and the last-named declared that he was the actual witness of my father’s crime. When we were alone that same night as we walked by a bypath across the park he put his intentions to me plainly—namely, that I should be compelled to accept him as my husband, and marry him in secret against my father’s knowledge. Otherwise he would give information to the police regarding the allegation against my father.”