“If he were not your lover, why should you do that? Your own words prove your guilt?”
“Because I had reasons,” she replied. “Reasons!” I repeated, my thoughts at once reverting to the piece of seal I had discovered. “Strange reasons they must be, surely. What is his name?”
“It is nobody you know. You have never heard of him.”
It was upon the tip of my tongue to denounce him as the perpetrator of the crime in Bedford Place, but with difficulty I restrained myself, and, impelled by the strangeness of her manner, demanded:
“Who is he? Answer me!”
“I am very sorry, Frank, but I cannot,” she replied, her face deathly pale, and her limbs trembling with agitation.
“Then you refuse to answer?” I cried, stung to the quick by her dogged persistency.
“Yes; I must.”
Her hands clasped, her teeth firmly set, her bloodless face tear-stained and haggard, and her hair disordered, she stood rigidly beside the chair that supported her, striving by an almost superhuman effort to suppress her emotion.
“Vera,” I shouted fiercely, “it seems I’ve been fooled. Curse that man who has brought misery and destruction to us both! By heaven if—”