"
"I trusted him. I would trust him in many ways yet."
"Would you trust him enough to believe that he would tell you the
truth if you asked him point-blank whether his hands were clean of
crime?"
"Yes." The word came in a whisper; but there was no wavering in
it. She had felt the conviction dart like an arrow through her
mind that Oliver might slay a man in his hate,--might even conceal
his guilt for years--but that he could not lie about it when
brought face to face with an accuser like herself.
"Then I will let you read something he wrote at my request these
many years ago: An experience--the tale of one awful night, the
horrors of which, locked within his mind and mine, have never been
revealed to a third person. That you should share our secret now,
is not only necessary but fitting. It becomes the widow of John
Scoville to know what sort of a man she persists in regarding
innocent. Wait here for me."
With a quick step he wound his way among the various encumbering
pieces of furniture, to the door opening into his bedroom. A
breathless moment ensued, during which she heard his key turn in
the lock, followed by the repeating sound of his footsteps, as he
wended his way inside to a point she could only guess at from her
knowledge of the room, to be a dresser in one of the corners. Here
he lingered so long that, without any conscious volition of her
own,--almost in spite of her volition which would have kept her
where she was,--she found herself on her feet, then moving step by
step, more cautiously than he, in and out of huddling chairs and
cluttering tables till she came to a stand-still before the
reflection (in some mirror, no doubt) of the judge's tall form,
bending not over the dresser, as she had supposed, but before a
cupboard in the wall--a cupboard she had never seen, in a wall she
had never seen, but now recognised for the one hitherto concealed
by the great carpet rug.
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