ling had made
dishonorable advances to him, and had finally become his mistress, in
order to buy his silence on the trust money and the continuance of his
financial help. On the other hand, the case for the defence was that--as
I have stated--it was in the maddened state of feeling, provoked by his
attack upon her honor, and made intolerable by the wife's taunts and
threats, that Juliet Sparling struck the fatal blow. At the trial the
judge believed me; the jury--and a large part of the public--you, I have
no doubt among them--believed Wing. The jury were probably influenced by
some of the evidence given by the fellow-guests in the house, which
seemed to me simply to amount to this--that a woman in the strait in
which Juliet Sparling was will endeavor, out of mortal fear, to keep the
ruffian who has her in his power in a good-humor."

"However, I have now confirmatory evidence for my theory of the
matter--evidence which has never been produced--and which I tell you now
simply because the happiness of her child--and of your son--is
at stake."

Lady Lucy moved a little. The color returned to her cheeks. Sir James,
however, gave her no time to interrupt. He stood before her, smiting
one hand against another, to emphasize his words, as he continued:

"Francis Wing lived for some eighteen years after Mrs. Sparling's death.
Then, just as the police were at last on his track as the avengers of a
long series of frauds, he died at Antwerp in extreme poverty and
degradation. The day before he died he dictated a letter to me, which
reached me, through a priest, twenty-four hours after his death. For his
son's sake, he invited me to regard it as confidential. If Mrs. Sparling
had been alive I should, of course, have taken no notice of the request.
But she had been dead for eighteen years; I had lost sight completely of
Sparling and the child, and, curiously enough, I knew something of
Wing's son. He was about ten years old at the death of his mother, and
was then rescued from his father by the Wing kindred and decently
brought up. At the time the letter reached me he was a promising young
man of eight-and-twenty, he had just been called to the Bar, and he was
in the chambers of a friend of mine. By publishing Wing's confession I
could do no good to the dead, and I might harm the living. So I held my
tongue. Whether, now, I should still hold it is, no doubt, a question.

"However, to go back to the statement. Wing declared to me