第27章

"What reasons?" asked Blandford, with a sudden relapse of his former harshness.

"Wa'al, Squire Blandford, sens you wanter know--I reckon your business wasn't payin', and there was a matter of two hundred and fifty dollars ye took with ye, that your creditors would hev liked to hev back.""Who dare say that?" demanded Blandford, angrily.

"Your wife that was--Mrs.Demorest ez is--told it to her mother,"returned Ezekiel, lazily.

The blow struck deeper than even Ezekiel's dry malice imagined.

For an instant, Blandford remained stupefied.In the five years'

retrospect of his resolution on that fatal night, whatever doubt of its wisdom might have obtruded itself upon him, he had never thought of THIS.He had been willing to believe that his wife had quietly forgotten him as well as her treachery to him, he had passively acquiesced in the results of that forgetfulness and his own silence; he had been conscious that his wound had healed sooner than he expected, but if this consciousness had enabled him to extend a certain passive forgiveness to his wife and Demorest, it was always with the conviction that his mysterious effacement had left an inexplicable shadow upon them which their consciences alone could explain.But for this unjust, vulgar, and degrading interpretation of his own act of expiation, he was totally unprepared.It completely crushed whatever sentiment remained of that act in the horrible irony of finding himself put upon his defence before the world, without being able now to offer the real cause.The anguish of that night had gone forever; but the ridiculous interpretation of it had survived, and would survive it.

In the eyes of the man before him he was not a wronged husband, but an absconding petty defaulter, whom he had just detected!

His mind was quickly made up.In that instant he had resolved upon a step as fateful as his former one, and a fitting climax to its results.For five years he had clearly misunderstood his attitude towards his treacherous wife and perjured friend.Thanks to this practical, selfish machine before him, he knew it now.

"Look here, Corwin," he said, turning upon Ezekiel a colorless face, but a steady, merciless eye."I can guess, without your telling me, what lies may be circulated about me by the man and woman who know that I have only to declare myself alive to convict them of infamy--perhaps even of criminality before the law.You are not MY friend, or you would not have believed them; if you are THEIRS, you have two courses open to you now.Keep this meeting to yourself and trust to my mercy to keep it a secret also; or, tell Mrs.Demorest that you have seen Mr.Johnson, who is not afraid to come forward at any moment and proclaim that he is Edward Blandford, her only lawful husband.Choose which course you like--it is nothing more to me."