Page:The Fate of Fenella (1892).djvu/286

 "If you want to clear your wife's name, come at four o'clock this afternoon to No. 10 Pearson's Row, Mersey Street, then I will tell you all.

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The paper dropped from Jacynth's hands. "If Mme. de Vigny were living I should say that she wrote this letter," he remarked. "But how," he added, rather to himself than to Frank, "how could she know?"

Onslow looked up. His face was haggard, and there was a wild light in his eyes. "If she lives," he said brokenly, "she shall pay for all that she has done——"

"There is no likelihood that she has been saved," Jacynth broke in. "I don't think a single woman was rescued. No, Frank, this is a plant; and of course you will take no notice of it."

"No notice of it! But do you think that I would leave a stone unturned where Fenella's honor is in question?"

"For Heaven's sake, don't go," cried Jacynth hotly. "There can. be no possible good in it. What can there be for you to hear, unless you doubt your wife's story?"

His brow became dark and menacing as he spoke, but he was more anxious than angry. He and Fenella knew the truth, and he was bound by her wishes to keep it secret from Lord Francis; was it possible that anyone else should know? Surely, he said to himself, no other soul on earth