Yet, after all, how could she when that man, the fellow who had written that letter, had fallen by her hand?
The letter at least showed that her enemies had been and were still unscrupulous. Winsloe, even now, was ready to send her to her grave, just as I had been sent—because I had dared to come between the conspirators and their victim. And yet she trusted Nello—whoever the fellow was.
Who was the man Denton, I wondered? A friend of the mysterious “R.W.,” without a doubt, and a malefactor like himself.
I placed my finger within the linen-lined envelope, and to my surprise found a second piece of thin blue paper folded in half. Eagerly I opened it and saw that it was a letter written in plain English, in bad ink, and so faint that with difficulty I read the lines.
It was in the scoundrel’s handwriting—the same calligraphy as that upon the envelope.
I read the lines, and so extraordinary were they that I sat back upon the seat utterly bewildered.
What was written there complicated the affair more than ever. The problem admitted of no solution, for the mystery was by those written lines rendered deeper and more inscrutable than before.
Was Sybil, after all, playing me false?
I held my breath as the grave peril of the situation came vividly home to me.
Yes—I had trusted her; I had believed her.