“Tell me, Mabel. Tell me all,” I cried breathlessly.
“No,” she answered. “No, not until you have promised to swear that you sat with me in the shrubbery, and that Markwick was not present. Only in exchange for your aid will I reveal to you the secret.”
Chapter Nineteen.
The Earl’s Suspicions.
“Will you—will you swear?” she implored, grasping my hands, her white agitated countenance still lifted to mine in earnest appeal.
I had felt confident long ago that she must know something of Sybil, from the fact that Sternroyd’s photograph had been placed with that of my dead wife, but was entirely unprepared for this strange offer. I was to commit perjury and thus shield this mysterious scoundrel Markwick as well as herself, in order to learn some facts about the woman I had loved. At first, so intense was my desire to obtain a clue to the inscrutable mystery that had enveloped Sybil, that I confess my impulse was to give my promise. But on reflection I saw the possibility that she desired to shield Markwick, and not herself; and I also recognised the probability that her promised revelation might, after all, be entirely untrue. These thoughts decided me.
“No,” I answered with firmness. “I will not commit perjury, even though its price be the secret of my wife’s life.”
“You will not?” she wailed. “Not for my sake?”