Page:Scribner's Monthly, Volume 12 (May–October 1876).djvu/37

Rh for translation a document, revealing the dreadful death of him—your husband!—my brother!—do you hear?—by starvation. Driven from his home by shame, he had desperately sought to hide himself as I had—accepted the hardship of emigration—he a gentleman and a man of letters—with the boors and rabble of the plains, had shared their low trials and their vulgar pains, and died among them, unknown and unrecorded." "He died as he had lived," said Mrs. Conroy, passionately, "a traitor and a hypocrite; he died following the fortunes of his paramour, an uneducated, vulgar rustic, to whom, dying, he willed a fortune—this girl—Grace Conroy. Thank God I have the record! Hush!—what's that?" Whatever it was—a falling bough, or the passing of some small animal in the underbrush—it was past now. A dead silence enwrapped the two solitary actors; they might have been the first man and the first woman, so encompassed were they by nature and solitude. "No," she went on hurriedly in a lower tone, "it was the same old story—the story of that girl at Basle—the story of deceit and treachery which brought us first together, which made you, Henry, my friend, which turned our sympathies into a more dangerous passion! You have suffered. Ah, well, so have I. We are equal now." Henry Devarges looked speechlessly upon his companion. Her voice trembled, there were tears in her eyes, that had replaced the burning light of womanly indignation. He had come there knowing her to have been doubly treacherous to her husband and himself. She had not denied it. He had come there to tax her with an infamous imposture, but had found himself within the last minute glowing with sympathetic condemnation of his own brother, and ready to accept some yet unoffered and perfectly explicable theory of that imposture. More than that, he began to feel that his own wrongs were slight in comparison with the injuries received by this superior woman. The woman who endeavors to justify herself to her jealous lover always has a powerful ally in his own self-love, and Devarges was quite willing to believe that even if he had lost her love he had never at least been deceived. And the answer to the morality of this imposture was before him. Here was she married to the surviving brother of the girl she had personated. Had he—had Dr. Devarges ever exhibited as noble trust, as perfect appreciation of her nature and her sufferings? Had they not thrown away the priceless pearl of this woman's love, through ignorance and selfishness? You and I, my dear sir, who are not in love with this most reprehensible creature, will be quick to see the imperfect logic of Henry Devarges; but when a man constitutes himself accuser, judge, and jury of the woman he loves, he is very apt to believe he is giving a verdict when he is only entering a nolle prosequi. It is probable that Mrs. Conroy had noticed this weakness in her companion, even with her pre-occupied fears of the inopportune appearance of Victor, whom she felt she could have accounted for much better in his absence. Victor was an impulsive person, and there are times when this quality, generally adored by a self-restrained sex, is apt to be confounding. "Why did you come here to see me?" asked Mrs. Conroy, with a dangerous smile. "Only to abuse me?"

"There is another grant in existence for the same land that you claim as Grace Conroy or Mrs. Conroy," returned Devarges, with masculine bluntness,—"a grant given prior to that made to my brother Paul. A suspicion that some imposture has been practiced is entertained by the party holding the grant, and I have been requested to get at the facts." Mrs. Conroy's gray eyes lightened. "And how were these suspicions aroused?" "By an anonymous letter." "And you have seen it?" "Yes—both it and the hand- writing in portions of the grant are identical." "And you know the hand?" "I do—it is that of a man, now here, an old Californian—Victor Ramirez!" He fixed his eyes upon her; unabashed she turned her own clear glance on his, and asked with a dazzling smile, "But does not your client know that whether the grant is a forgery or not, my husband's title is good?" "Yes, but the sympathies of my client, as you call her, are interested in the orphan girl Grace." "Ah!" said Mrs. Conroy, with the faintest possible sigh, "your client, for whom you have traveled—how many miles?—is a woman?" Half-pleased, but half-embarrassed, Devarges said, "Yes." "I understand," said Mrs. Conroy, slowly. "A young woman, perhaps, a good, a pretty