“If there is any misinterpretation here of what you said, or perhaps of what you meant to say, pray destroy what I have written without turning to the next page; and forgive me for having innocently startled you by a false alarm.”
“Put it down!” he cried; “I won’t wait till you have got to the end--I shall question you now. Give me the paper; it will help me to keep this mystery of iniquity clear in my own mind.”
He hesitated--and looked at the portrait once more. “Turn her away from me,” he said; “I can’t face my wife.”
I placed the picture with its back to him.
He consulted the paper, reading it with but little of the confusion and hesitation which my experience of him had induced me to anticipate. Had the mad excitement that possessed him exercised an influence in clearing his mind, resembling in some degree the influence exercised by a storm in clearing the air? Whatever the right explanation may be, I can only report what I saw. I could hardly have mastered what his daughter had written more readily, if I had been reading it myself.
“Helena tells me,” he began, “that you said you knew her by her likeness to her mother. Is that true?”
“And you made an excuse for leaving her--see! here it is, written down. You made an excuse, and left her when she asked for an explanation.”
“My daughter says--No! I won’t be hurried and I won’t be interrupted--she says you were confused. Is that so?”
“It is so. Let your questions wait for a moment. I wish to tell you why I was confused.”
“Haven’t I said I won’t be interrupted? Do you think you can shake _my_ resolution?” He referred to the paper again. “I have lost the place. It’s your fault--find it for me.”
The evidence which was intended to convict me was the evidence which I was expected to find! I pointed it out to him.
His natural courtesy asserted itself in spite of his anger. He said “Thank you,” and questioned me the moment after as fiercely as ever. “Go back to the time, sir, when we met in your rooms at the prison. Did you know my wife then?”
“Did you and she see each other--ha! I’ve got it now--did you see each other after I had left the town? No prevarication! You own to telling Helena that you knew her by her likeness to her mother. You must have seen her mother. Where?”