“Because I dared not. Ah! Do not judge me prematurely!” she pleaded, clutching my arm. “When you know the truth, you will see there are extenuating circumstances. Tell me that you will hear me to the end before you condemn me as an adventuress.”
“Sybil,” I said, as calmly as I could, my fingers closing over hers, “I love you as I have always loved you. Explain everything, let me act for you in settling accounts with those who have held you in bondage, and then, when all is plain, when the secret of this strange life of yours is explained, then will we resume that perfect but abruptly terminated happiness of the old never-to-be-forgotten days at Luchon.”
“Ah, Stuart! I knew you loved me!” she cried, dinging to me passionately. “I knew that you would hear me, because you are loyal and generous to a woman, as you always were. Yes; now, owing to a combination of circumstances, I am at last free to speak, and will conceal nothing. Our enemies parted us cruelly, deceiving us both, and acting with a cunning that was amazing. Therefore you, the principal sufferer, shall have the satisfaction of exposing their trickery and bringing them to justice. Even upon you, at one time, they heaped suspicion so that you might be made their scapegoat, while against myself the police also held a warrant for an offence I committed without the least criminal intent. Ah! my story is a strange one; stranger than any have imagined.”
“Yes,” observed Dora, “the little I know of it astounds me. When the true facts are made known and the murderer of Gilbert Sternroyd arrested, what a scandal it will cause!”
“Then who is the culprit?” I inquired, in breathless anxiety to solve the inscrutable mystery that had so long puzzled me.
“Be patient for a moment,” Sybil answered, “and I will explain events in their sequence. Then you will see plainly by whose hand Gilbert fell.”
“You knew him, did you not?” I asked.
“Ah!” she said smiling. “You purchased my photograph—the one I had caused to be placed in the shop-window in Regent Street, so that you should notice it, and on buying it, as I knew you must, you would learn that I still lived.”
“Yes. But I could not believe the truth,” I said hastily. “It was so incredible that I came to the conclusion that the photographer had made some mistake about the date.” Then I added: “Why was Sternroyd placed beside you?”
“There was a reason, which you will shortly see,” she replied. “I knew Gilbert, it is true. Do not, however, for a moment imagine he was ever fond of me. He was engaged to someone else.”