"Spare me, sir, for pity's sake," murmured Reginald, hoarsely.
"When did you spare others, Mr. Reginald Eversleigh? When did you consider others, if they stood in the way of your base pleasures, your selfish gratifications? Never! Nor will I spare you. As Jane's engaged lover, you were invited to Stukely Park. There you saw Mary Goodwin. Accident threw you across this girl's pathway very often in the course of your visit; but the time came when you ceased to meet by accident. There were secret meetings in the park. The poor, weak, deluded girl could not resist the fascinations of the fine gentleman--who lured her to destruction by means of lying promises. In due time you left Stukely Park, unsuspected. Within a few days of your departure, the girl, Mary Goodwin, disappeared.
"For six months nothing was heard of the missing Mary Goodwin; but at the end of that time a gentleman, who remembered her in the days of her beauty and innocence at Stukely Park, recognized the features of Miss Stukely's _protégée_ in the face of a suicide, whose body was exhibited in the Morgue at Paris. The girl had been found drowned. The Englishman paid the charges of a decent funeral, and took back to the Stukelys the intelligence of their _protégée's_ fate; but no one knew the secret of her destruction. That secret was, however, suspected by Jane Stukely, who broke her engagement with you on the strength of the dark suspicion.
"It was to you she fled when she left Stukely Park--in your companionship she went abroad, where she passed as your wife, you assuming a false name--under which you were recognized, nevertheless. The day came when you grew weary of your victim. When your funds were exhausted, when the girl's tears and penitence grew troublesome--in the hour when she was most helpless and miserable, and had most need of your pity and protection, you abandoned her, leaving her alone in Paris, with a few pounds to pay for her journey home, if she should have courage to go back to the friends who had sheltered her. In this hour of abandonment and shame, she chose death rather than such an ordeal, and drowned herself."
"I give you my honour, Sir Oswald, I meant to act liberally. I meant,"--the young man interrupted; but his uncle did not notice the interruption.