as, like
himself--a criminal. I afterwards learned that he was an escaped thief
and assassin. Well, he played upon me all the way here, for I didn't
care to reveal my real trouble to him, lest it should get back to North
liberty--" He interrupted himself with a sarcastic laugh. "Of course,
you understand that all this while Joan was getting her divorce unknown
to me, and you were marrying her--yet as I didn't know anything about it
I let him compromise me to save her. But"--he stopped, his eye kindled,
and, losing his self-control in what to Demorest seemed some incoherent
passion, went on excitedly: "that man continued his persecution
HERE--yes, HERE, in this very house, where I was a trusted and honored
guest, and threatened to expose me to a pure, innocent, simple girl
who had taken pity on me--unless I helped him in a conspiracy of
cattle-stealers and road agents, of which he was chief. I was such a
cursed sentimental fool then, that believing him capable of doing this,
believing myself still the husband of that woman, your wife, and to
spare that innocent girl the shame of thinking me a villain, I purchased
his silence by consenting. May God curse me for it!"

He had started to his feet with flashing eyes, and the indication of an
overmastering passion that to Demorest, absorbed only in the stupefying
revelation of his wife's divorce and the horrible doubt it implied,
seemed utterly vacant and unmeaning.

He had often dreamed of Blandford as standing before him, reproachful,
indignant, and even desperate over his wife's unfaithfulness; but
this insane folly and fury over some trivial wrong done to that plump,
baby-faced, flirting Dona Rosita, crushed him by its unconscious but
degrading obliteration of Joan and himself more than the most violent
denunciation. Dazed and bewildered, yet with the instinct of a helpless
man, he clung only to that part of Blandford's story which indicated
that he had come there for Rosita, and not to separate him from Joan,
and even turned to his former friend with a half-embarrassed gesture of
apology as he stammered--

"Then it was YOU who were Rosita's lover, and you who have been here
to see her. Forgive me, Ned--if I had only known it." He stopped and
timidly extended his hand. But Blandford put it aside with a cold
gesture and folded his arms.

"You have forgotten all you ever knew of me, Demorest! I am not in
the habit of making clandestine appointments with helpless women wh