“You defy any man!  Do you, also, defy any woman?  Tell me, if you can, whose glove this is?” And she pulled from her bosom the blood-stained glove, and held it up before him.

He looked at it, flushed crimson, and trembled perceptibly.  She laughed scornfully.

“Archer Trevlyn, your guilt is known to me!  It has been known to me ever since the fatal night on which Paul Linmere met his death.  I was there that night, by the lonely graveyard.  I saw you kiss her hand!  I heard the dreadful blow, listened to the smothered groan, and saw through the gloom the guilty murderer as he fled from the scene of crime!  When the victim was discovered, I went first, because I feared he might have left behind him something that might fix his identity—­and so he had.  This glove I found lying upon the ground, by the side of the wretched victim—­marked with the name of the murderer-stained with the blood of the murdered!  I hid it away; I would have died sooner than it should have been torn from me, because I was foolish enough to love this man, whose hand was red with murder!  Archer Trevlyn, you took the life of Paul Linmere, and thus removed the last obstacle that stood between you and Margaret Harrison!”

Trevlyn’s face had grown white as death while she had been speaking, but it was more like the white heat of passion, than like the pallor of detected guilt.  His rigid lips were stern and pale; his dark eyes fairly shot lightnings.  He looked at his wife, as though he would read her very soul.

“Alexandrine!” he said, hoarsely, “you believed this of me?  You deemed me guilty of the crime of murder, and yet you married me?”

“Yes, I married you.  I was not so conscientious as your saintly Margaret.  She would not marry a man who had shed blood—­even though he had done it for love of her!”

Trevlyn caught her arm fiercely.

“Madam, do you mean to say that this shameful story ever came to the ears of Margie Harrison?”

“Yes, she knew it.  I told it to her myself!  Kill me, if you like,” she added, seeing his fearful face; “it will not be your first crime!”

He forced himself to be calm.

“When did you make this revelation to Margaret?”

“The night before she left New York—­the night she was to have gone to the opera with you.  I deemed it my duty.  I did not do it to separate you, though I am willing to confess that I desired you to be separated.  I knew that Margaret would sooner die than marry you, if the knowledge of your crime was possessed by her.”

“And she—­Margaret—­believed me guilty?”

“Why should she not?  Any jury of twelve impartial men would have committed you on the evidence I could have brought.  You were in love with Miss Harrison.  She was under a solemn obligation to marry Mr. Linmere—­yet she loved you.  Nothing save his death could release her.  You were, then, at night in a lonely graveyard, where none of your kin were slumbering.  There, at that hour, the murder was done, and after its commission, you stole forth silently, guiltily.  By the side of the murdered man, was found your glove, stained with his blood; and a little way from his dead body, a handkerchief, bearing the single initial ‘A.’  Whose name commences with that letter?  Could anything be clearer or more conclusive?”