Dwight Pollard.

Oh, ’tis too true! how smart

A lash that speech doth give my conscience!

HAMLET.

He was standing with his back to me, and to all appearance was unconscious that he was under the surveillance of any eye. I had thus a moment in which to collect my energies and subdue my emotions; and I availed myself of it to such good purpose that by the time he had put the board back into its place I was ready to face him. He did not turn round, however; so, after a moment of silent suspense, I mounted the last stair, and thinking of nothing, hoping for nothing, wishing for nothing, stood waiting, with my eyes fixed on the domino he was now rapidly folding into smaller compass.

And thus I stood, like a pallid automaton, when the instant came for him to change his position, and he saw me. The cry that rose to his lips but did not escape them, the reel which his figure gave before it stiffened into marble, testified to the shock he had received, and also to the sense of unreality with which my appearance in this wise must have impressed him. His look, his attitude were those of a man gazing upon a spectre, and as I met his glance with mine, I was conscious of a feeling of unreality myself, as if the whole occurrence were a dream, and he and I but shadows which another moment would dissolve.

But alas! this was no more a dream than were the other strange and tragic events which had gone before; and in an instant we both knew it, and were standing face to face with wretched inquiry in the looks we fixed upon each other across the domino which had fallen from his hands. He was the first to speak.

“Miss Sterling!” he exclaimed, in a light tone, cruelly belied by the trembling lips from which it issued, “by what fortunate chance do I see you again, and in a place I should have thought to be the last you would be likely to visit?”

“By the same chance,” I rejoined, “which appears to have brought you here. The desire to make sure if what I heard about the mill having been used as a secreting place for certain mysterious articles, was true.” And I pointed to the mask and domino lying at my feet.

His eye, which had followed the direction of my finger, grew dark and troubled.

“Then it was your hand —” he impetuously began.

“Which disturbed these garments before you? Yes. And I shall make no apology for the action,” I continued, “since it was done in the hope of proving false certain insinuations which had been made to me in your regard.”

“Insinuations?” he repeated.

“Yes,” I declared, in an agony between my longing to hear him vindicate himself and the desire to be true to the obligations I was under to Ada Reynolds. “Insinuations of the worst, the most terrible, character.” Then, as I saw him fall back, stricken in something more than his pride, I hastened to inquire: “Have you an enemy in town, Mr. Pollard?”

He composed himself with a start, looked at me fixedly, and replied in what struck me as a strange tone even for such an occasion as this:

“Perhaps.”

“One who out of revenge,” I proceeded, “might be induced to attach your name to suspicions calculated to rob you of honor, if not life?”

“Perhaps,” he again returned; but this time with a fierceness that almost made me recoil, though I knew it was directed against some one besides myself.

“Then it may be,” I said, “that you have but to speak to relieve my mind of the heaviest weight which has ever fallen upon it. These articles,” I pursued, “have they, or have they not, any connection with the tragedy which makes the place in which we stand memorable?”

“I cannot answer you, Miss Sterling.”

“Cannot answer me?”

“Cannot answer you,” he reiterated, turning haggard about the eyes and lips.

“Then,” I brokenly rejoined, “I had better leave this place; I do not see what more I have to do or say here.”

“O God!” he cried, detaining me with a gesture full of agony and doubt. “Do not leave me so; let me think. Let me weigh the situation and see where I stand, in your eyes at least. Tell me what my enemy has said!” he demanded, his face, his very form, flashing with a terrible rage that seemed to have as much indignation as fear in it.

“Your enemy,” I replied, in the steady voice of despair, “accuses you in so many words — of murder.”

I expected to see him recoil, burst forth into cursing or frenzied declamation, by which men betray their inward consternation and remorse; but he did none of these things. Instead of that he laughed; a hideous laugh that seemed to shake the rafters above us and echoed in and out of the caverned recesses beneath.

“Accuses me?” he muttered; and it is not in language to express the scorn he infused into the words.

Stunned, and scarcely knowing what to think, I gazed at him helplessly. He seemed to feel my glance, for, after a moment’s contemplation of my face, his manner suddenly changed, and bowing with a grim politeness full of sarcasm, he asked:

“And when did you see my enemy and hold this precious conversation in which I was accused of murder?”

“Yesterday afternoon,” I answered. “During the time of your mother’s funeral,” I subjoined, startled by the look of stupefaction which crossed his face at my words.

“I don’t understand you,” he murmured, sweeping his hand in a dazed way over his brow. “You saw him then? Spoke to him? Impossible!”

“It is not a man to whom I allude,” I returned, almost as much agitated as himself. “It is a woman who is your accuser, a woman who seems to feel she has a right to make you suffer, possibly because she has suffered so much herself.”

“A woman!” was all he said; “a woman!” turning pale enough now, God knows.

“Have you no enemies among the women?” I asked, wearied to the soul with the position in which my cruel fate had forced me.

“I begin to think I have,” he answered, giving me a look that somehow broke down the barriers of ice between us and made my next words come in a faltering tone:

“And could you stop to bestow a thought upon a man while a woman held your secret? Did you think our sex was so long-suffering, or this special woman so generous ——”

I did not go on, for he had leaped the gap which separated us and had me gently but firmly by the arm.

“Of whom are you speaking?” he demanded. “What woman has my secret — if secret I have? Let me hear her name, now, at once.”

“Is it possible,” I murmured, “that you do not know?”

“The name! the name!” he reiterated, his eyes ablaze, his hand shaking where it grasped my arm.

“Rhoda Colwell,” I returned, looking him steadily in the eye.

“Impossible!” his lips seemed to breathe, and his clasp slowly unloosed from my arm like a ring of ice which melts away. “Rhoda Colwell! Good God!” he exclaimed, and staggered back with ever~growing wonder and alarm till half the room lay between us.

“I am not surprised at your emotion,” I said; “she is a dangerous woman.”

He looked at me with dull eyes; he did not seem to hear what I said.

“How can it be?” he muttered; and his glance took a furtive aspect as it travelled slowly round the room and finally settled upon the mask and domino at my feet. “Was it she who told you where to look for those?” he suddenly queried in an almost violent tone.

I bowed; I had no wish to speak.

“She is an imp, a witch, an emissary of the Evil One,” he vehemently declared; and turned away, murmuring, as it seemed to me, those sacred words of Scripture, “Be sure your sin find you out.”

I felt the sobs rise in my throat. I could bear but little more. To recover myself, I looked away from him, even passed to a window and gazed out. Any thing but the sight of this humiliation in one who could easily have been my idol. I was therefore standing with my back to him when he finally approached, and touching me with the tip of his finger, calmly remarked;

“I did not know you were acquainted with Miss Colwell.”

“Nor was I till yesterday,” I rejoined. “Fate made us know each other at one int............