“Minnie, I come merely to exonerate myself before God and man.  Heaven is my witness, that I never knew I had a child in America until to-night, that until to-night I believed you were in California living as the wife of that base villain Peterson, who wrote announcing himself your accepted lover.  From the day I kissed you good-bye at the cottage, I never received a line, a word, a message from you.  When I doubted my father’s and Peterson’s statements concerning you, and wrote two letters, one to the President of the college, one to a resident professor, seeking some information of your whereabouts, in order at least to visit you once more, when I became twenty-one, both answered me that you had forfeited your fair name, had been forsaken by your grandmother, and had gone away from the village accompanied by Peterson, who was regarded as your favoured lover.  I ceased to doubt, I believed you false.  I knew no better until to-night.  Father, my honour demands that the truth be spoken at last.  Will you corroborate my statement?”

Pale and proud, he stood erect, and she saw that a consciousness of rectitude at least in purpose, sustained him.

“Mrs. Orme——­” began General Laurance.

“Away with such shams and masks!  Mrs. Orme died on the theatrical boards to-night, and henceforth the world knows me as Minnie Laurance!  Ah! by the grace of God!  Minnie Laurance!”

She laughed derisively, and held up her fair slender hand, exhibiting the black agate with its grinning skull lighted by the glow of the large radiant diamonds.

“Minnie, I never dreamed you were his wife; oh, my God! how horrible it all is!”

He seemed bewildered, and his son exclaimed: 

“Who is responsible for the separation from my wife?  You, father, or I?”

“I did it, my son.  I meant it for the best.  I naturally believed you had been entrapped into a shameful alliance, and as any other father would have done, I was ready to credit the unfavourable estimate derived from the man Peterson.  He told me that Minnie had belonged to him until she and her grandmother conceived the scheme of inveigling you into a secret marriage; and afterward he informed me of the birth of his child.  I did not pay him to claim it, but when he pronounced it his, I gave him money to pay the expenses of the two whom he claimed to California; and I supposed until to-night that both had accompanied him.  I did not manufacture statements, I only gladly credited them; and believing all that man told me, I felt justified in intercepting letters addressed to you by the woman whom he claimed as mother of his child.  Madame, do not blame Cuthbert.  I did it all.”

The abject wretchedness of his mien disconcerted her; robbed her of half her anticipated triumph.  How could she exult in trampling upon a bruised worm which made no attempt to crawl from beneath her heel?  He sat, the image of hopeless dejection, his hands crossed on the gold head of his cane.