“She declared always that he had been murdered, and vowed to detect the author of the crime.”
“Are you, in your own mind, convinced that there was anything really mysterious regarding her actions; or were they only everyday facts distorted by jealousy?” he asked gravely.
“There is, I believe, some deep mystery regarding her past,” I answered.
He knit his grey, shaggy brows, and started perceptibly.
“Her past!” he echoed. “Were you aware of any—er—unpleasant fact prior to marriage?” he inquired quickly.
“Yes. She promised to explain everything ere long; therefore, loving her devotedly as I did, I resolved to make her my wife and await in patience her explanation.”
“Love!” he cried cynically. “She did not love you. She only married you, it seems, to accomplish her own base and mysterious designs.” Then, pacing the room from end to end, he added, “The more I reflect, the more apparent does it become that Ella Laing meant, by becoming your wife, to accomplish some great coup, but, prevented by some unforeseen circumstance, she has been compelled to fly, and in her haste overlooked this incriminating paper.”
This, too, was my own opinion, and taking from my pocket the whole of the letters that were in the escritoire, I placed them before him.
“They are from your wife’s mysterious lover,” he observed, when a few moments later he had digested them. “Who he is there is no evidence to show. You suspect him, of course, to be the man she met in Kensington Gardens?”
I nodded. A sigh escaped me.