Hand and Ring

"How do I know?" He paused as if to get his breath. "How do I know?" he repeated, calling up all his self-control to sustain her gaze unmoved. "Do you think I have lost my reason, Imogene, that you put me such a question as that? How do I know you are innocent? Recall your own words and acts since the day we met at Mrs. Clemmens' house, and tell me how it would be possible for me to think any thing else of you?"

But her purpose did not relax, neither did she falter as she returned:

"Mr. Orcutt, will you tell me what has ever been said by me or what you have ever known me to do that would make it certain I did not commit this crime myself?"

His indignation was too much for his courtesy.

"Imogene," he commanded, "be silent! I will not listen to any further arguments of this sort. Isn't it enough that you have destroyed my happiness, that you should seek to sport with my good-sense? I say you are innocent as a babe unborn, not only of the crime itself but of any complicity in it. Every word you have spoken, every action you have taken, since the day of Mrs. Clemmens' death, proves you to be the victim of a fixed conviction totally at war with the statement you were pleased to make to-day. Only your belief in the guilt of another and your – your – "

He stopped, choked. The thought of his rival maddened him.

She immediately seized the opportunity to say:

"Mr. Orcutt, I cannot argue about what I have done. It is over and cannot be remedied. It is true I have destroyed myself, but this is no time to think of that. All I can think of or mourn over now is that, by destroying myself, I have not succeeded in saving Craik Mansell."

If her purpose was to probe the lawyer's soul for the deadly wound that had turned all his sympathies to gall, she was successful at last. Turning upon her with a look in which despair and anger were strangely mingled, he cried:

"And me, Imogene – have you no thought for me?"

"Sir," said she, "any thought from one disgraced as I am now, would be an insult to one of your character and position."

It was true. In the eyes of the world Tremont Orcutt and Imogene Dare henceforth stood as far apart as the poles. Realizing it only too well, he uttered a half-inarticulate exclamation, and trod restlessly to the other end of the room. When he came back, it was with more of the lawyer's aspect and less of the baffled lover's.

"Imogene," he said, "what could have induced you to resort to an expedient so dreadful? Had you lost confidence in me? Had I not told you I would save this man from his threatened fate?"

"You cannot do every thing," she replied. "There are limits even to a power like yours. I knew that Craik was lost if I gave to the court the testimony which Mr. Ferris expected from me."

"Ah, then," he cried, seizing with his usual quickness at the admission which had thus unconsciously, perhaps, slipped from her, "you acknowledge you uttered a perjury to save yourself from making declarations you believed to be hurtful to the prisoner?"

A faint smile crossed her lips, and her whole aspect suddenly changed.

"Yes," she said; "I have no motive for hiding it from you now. I perjured myself to escape destroying Craik Mansell. I was scarcely the mistress of my own actions. I had suffered so much I was ready to do any thing to save the man I had so relentlessly pushed to his doom. I forgot that God does not prosper a lie."

The jealous gleam which answered her from the lawyer's eyes was a revelation.

"You regret, then," he said, "that you tossed my happiness away with a breath of your perjured lips?"

"I regret I did not tell the truth and trust God."

At this answer, uttered with the simplicity of a penitent spirit, Mr. Orcutt unconsciously drew back.

"And, may I ask, what has caused this sudden regret?" he inquired, in a tone not far removed from mockery; "the generous action of the prisoner in relieving you from your self-imposed burden of guilt by an acknowledgment that struck at the foundation of the defence I had so carefully prepared?"

"No," was her short reply; "that could but afford me joy. Of whatever sin he may be guilty, he is at least free from the reproach of accepting deliverance at the expense of a woman. I am sorry I said what I did to-day, because a revelation has since been made to me, which proves I could never have sustained myself in the position I took, and that it was mere suicidal folly in me to attempt to save Craik Mansell by such means."

"A revelation?"

"Yes." And, forgetting all else in the purpose which had actuated her in seeking this interview, Imogene drew nearer to the lawyer and earnestly said: "There have been some persons – I have perceived it – who have wondered at my deep conviction of Craik Mansell's guilt. But the reasons I had justified it. They were great, greater than any one knew, greater even than you knew. His mother – were she living – must have thought as I did, had she been placed beside me and seen what I have seen, and heard what I have heard from the time of Mrs. Clemmens' death. Not only were all the facts brought against him in the trial known to me, but I saw him – saw him with my own eyes, running from Mrs. Clemmens' dining-room door at the very time we suppose the murder to have been committed; that is, at five minutes before noon on the fatal day."

"Impossible!" exclaimed Mr. Orcutt, in his astonishment. "You are playing with my credulity, Imogene."

But she went on, letting her voice fall in awe of the lawyer's startled look.

"No," she persisted; "I was in Professor Darling's observatory. I was looking through a telescope, which had been pointed toward the town. Mrs. Clemmens was much in my mind at the time, and I took the notion to glance at her house, when I saw what I have described to you. I could not help remembering the time," she added, "for I had looked at the clock but a moment before."

"And it was five minutes before noon?" broke again from the lawyer's lips, in what was almost an awe-struck tone.

Troubled at an astonishment which seemed to partake of the nature of alarm, she silently bowed her head.

"And you were looking at him – actually looking at him – that very moment through a telescope perched a mile or so away?"

"Yes," she bowed again.

Turning his face aside, Mr. Orcutt walked to the hearth and began kicking the burnt-out logs with his restless foot. As he did so, Imogene heard him mutter between his set teeth:

"It is almost enough to make one believe in a God!"

Struck, horrified, she glided anxiously to his side.

"Do not you believe in a God?" she asked.

He was silent.

Amazed, almost frightened, for she had never heard him breathe a word of scepticism before, – though, to be sure, he had never mentioned the name of the Deity in her presence, – she stood looking at him like one who had received a blow; then she said:

"I believe in God. It is my punishment that I do. It is He who wills blood for blood; who dooms the guilty to a merited death. Oh, if He only would accept the sacrifice I so willingly offer! – take the life I so little value, and give me in return – "

"Mansell's?" completed the lawyer, turning upon her in a burst of fury he no longer had power to suppress. "Is that your cry – always and forever your cry? You drive me too far, Imogene. This mad and senseless passion for a man who no longer loves you – "

"Spare me!" rose from her trembling lips. "Let me forget that."

But the great lawyer only laughed.

"You make it worth my while to save you the bitterness of such a remembrance," he cried. Then, as she remained silent, he changed his tone to one of careless inquiry, and asked:

"Was it to tell this story of the prisoner having fled from his aunt's house that you came here to-night?"

Recalled to the purpose of the hour, she answered, hurriedly:

"Not entirely; that story was what Mr. Ferris expected me to testify to in court this morning. You see for yourself in what a position it would have put the prisoner."

"And the revelation you have received?" the lawyer coldly urged.

"Was of a deception that has been practised upon me – a base deception by which I was led to think long ago that Craik Mansell had admitted his guilt and only trusted to the excellence of his defence to escape punishment."

"I do not understand," said Mr. Orcutt. "Who could have practised such deception upon you?"

"The detectives," she murmured; "that rough, heartless fellow they call Hickory." And, in a burst of indignation, she told how she had been practised upon, and what the results had been upon her belief, if not upon the testimony which grew out of that belief.