“Had I listened to him I could easily have saved myself—I could have prevented him from coming here,” he said in a meaning voice.
“Yes; it would not have been difficult to have prevented this. After what has occurred that blackguard has no right to live.”
“Aha! then you believe me, Levi?” cried the wretched man. “You do not blame me?” he asked, anxiously.
“He was to blame—not you.”
“Then I was right in acting as I did, you think—right to protect my interests.”
“You were right in your self-defence,” the man answered, somewhat grey, sphinx-like, for Levi was a man whose thoughts one could never read from his thin, grey, expressionless face. “But you were injudicious when you disregarded Rolfe’s warning.”
“I thought he had his own interests to serve,” was Statham’s reply.
“Frankly, you believed it to be an attempt at blackmail. I quite follow you. But do you think Rolfe would be guilty of such a thing?”
“My dear Levi, when a poor man is in love, as Rolfe is, it is a sore temptation to obtain by any means, fair or foul, sufficient to marry and support a wife. You and I were both young once—eh? And we thought that our love would last always. Where is yours to-day, and”—he sighed—“where is mine?”
“You are right,” replied the old servant slowly, with a slight sigh. “You refer to little Marie. Ah! I can see her now, as plainly as she was then, forty years ago. How beautiful she was, how dainty, how perfect, and—ah!—how well you loved her. And what a tragedy—the tragedy of your life—the tragedy that has ever been hidden from the world—the—”