But when a man loves a woman as I loved Lolita, he cannot openly charge her with being a murderess. And yet how I longed and longed for strength to drive the demon suspicion from me; that fiend that sat hovering over my soul, affrighting every gleam that might afford me comfort.
“Then you have been loyal to me, Willoughby. You have kept your promise!” she exclaimed with a sad sweetness. “Would that you could rescue me from the cruel fate that must now be mine!”
I strove to speak, but utterance was denied me. She seemed so convinced of the hopelessness of the future that her very conviction seemed to carry upon it evidence of her guilt.
Could poor Hugh Wingfield, the man who had carried that secret cipher in his pocket and who had worn her portrait on his finger, have actually been struck down by that very hand that I had kissed?
Ah! no! Perish such a thought. She was my love—and my love was, I knew full well, the innocent victim of as foul and base a conspiracy as had ever been conceived by the ingenious mind of man.
I doubted her, but only on account of the character of the persons with whom she was in secret association. When I enumerated them in my mind I saw what a strange mysterious group they were—the young Frenchwoman, the man Logan, the two sallow-faced foreigners who had been diligent readers of socialistic newspapers, and, last of all, the rough-mannered hunter of big game, Smeeton, alias Keene—the man over whom the young Countess of Stanchester appeared to possess some secret power.
Was Marigold the evil genius of the situation? Her past had been so full of adventure, and the rumours about her—mostly untrue be it said—had been so many that I confess I felt inclined to prejudge and condemn her.
A vain, pretty married woman, fond of admiration and moving in the ultra-smart set, can seldom escape the evil tongue of gossip. Yet although I made every allowance for her social surroundings and the fact of her being one of “the giddy Gordons,” there were certain facts of my own knowledge with which I could not well reconcile her position as my friend’s wife. For that reason, as well as because of her open declaration of antagonism to Keene, I held her in suspicion. She had cleverly deceived me as to her real motive, and that was sufficient to cause me to regard her as an enemy.
“Why not admit this man Logan and let us consult together?” I suggested at last. “We might arrive at some way out of this deadly peril of yours.”
“We might,” she admitted. “But he would never meet and discuss the matter with you. Remember he is wanted by the police, and has no guarantee that you might not betray him. He told me of your meeting in Chelsea, how you raised the alarm, and how narrowly he escaped being captured. Therefore he views you with no great affection. No,” she added, “for the present you must not meet. It would be unwise. He must not even know that you axe in Edinburgh.”