"Marah may not be living," I said, "but she did not perish in the river. It would have been better for you, though, and infinitely better for her if she had. She only lived to do evil, Mr. Felt. In bemoaning her you have wasted a noble manhood."
The cry came suddenly, and rang through the cavern like a knell. I could not bear it, and hurried forward my revelation.
"You tell me that you received a letter from Mrs. Urquhart before she set sail for France. Was it the only letter which she has ever sent you? Have you never heard from her since?"
"Never!" He looked at me almost in anger. "I did not want to. I bade the postmaster to destroy any letters which came for me. I had cut myself loose from the world."
"No; I gave it back to the men who opened it. What was it to me?"
"Mark Felt," I now asked, "did you know Honora Dudleigh's writing?"
"Of course. Why should you question it? Why--"
"And was this letter in her writing? written by her hand?"
"Of course--of course; wasn't it signed with her name?"
"But the handwriting? Couldn't it have been an imitation? Wasn't it one? Was it not written by Marah, and not Honora? She was a clever woman, and--"
"Written by Marah? By Marah? Great heavens, did she go with them, then? Were my secret doubts right? Is she lost to me in eternity as well as here? Is she living with him?"
"She was living with him, and there is good reason to believe she is doing so still. There is a Mr. Urquhart in Paris, and a Mrs. Urquhart. As Marah is the woman he loved, she must be this latter."
"Must be? I do not see why you should say must be! Is Honora dead? Is--"
"Honora is dead--has been dead for sixteen years. The woman who sailed with Mr. Urquhart called herself Honora, but she was not Honora. She who rightfully bore this name was dead and hidden away. It is of crime that I am speaking. Edwin Urquhart is a murderer, and his victim was--"
It was not necessary to say more. In the suddenly outstretched hand, with its open palm; in the white face so drawn that his mother would not have known it; in the gradual sinking and collapsing of the whole body, I saw that I had driven the truth home at last, and that silence now was the only mercy left to show him.
I was silent, therefore, and waited as we wait beside a death bed for the final sigh of a departing spirit. But life, and not death, was in the soul of this man before me. Ere long he faintly stirred, then a smothered moan left his lips, followed by one word, and that word was the echo of my own: