. "You need not hesitate to speak.
She has promised to share my life with me, to take me as I am. She will
begin the task at once. Go on."

"So be it. I know now that Rose Mitchel, who was murdered, was known in
New Orleans as Rose Montalbon, and that she was your wife. I have also
discovered that you deceived a young Creole, the mother of that child
who has just left us. That when you deserted her, she died broken
hearted, whilst you allowed the Montalbon woman to take the girl and
pass it off as her own, though later she was kidnapped by you. The
woman suspected that you would wish to marry again, and swore to
prevent it. Her appearance upon the scene just as you were to become a
husband, must have been a menace to you. Do you see the point? Murders
have been committed with less motive. I think therefore that I have
sufficient evidence upon which to arrest you."

"You might arrest me upon less evidence," said Mr. Mitchel. "It is done
every day. But to convict me you would have to prove all this."

"How do you know that I cannot prove it?"

"For the very simple reason, that your facts are all wrong."

"Very good, Mr. Mitchel, but you will have to prove that."

"I am fully prepared to do so. To begin with, according to your story, I
abducted this child. There you are only partly right. I did take her
away from the Montalbon, and I did it as you might say, by stealth and
force. But I had the fullest right to do so."

"You admit then that you are her father?"

"On the contrary, I deny it, and there is the weak point in your story.
Your argument all depends upon my having been guilty of wronging that
girl's mother, and the Montalbon's having me in her power. In point of
fact, I am not her father, and the Montalbon had but a slim chance to
blackmail me."

"But you admitted to me that you allowed her to do so. That you gave her
a large amount, in jewels."

"That is true, yet I did not submit to blackmail."

"Mr. Mitchel I seldom forget a man's words. You told me that day in the
vaults that you were in the woman's power, that she could ventilate
certain scandals which might break your engagement. Yet now you say you
were not in her power and that you did not submit to blackmail. How can
you explain such conflicting statements?"

"Two conflicting statements may both be true, provided a lapse of time
occurs between them. When I admitted that I had been in the power of
that woman, I thought so, therefore I spoke th