ice imagined. For an
instant, Blandford remained stupefied. In the five years' retrospect of
his resolution on that fatal night, whatever doubt of its wisdom might
have obtruded itself upon him, he had never thought of THIS. He had been
willing to believe that his wife had quietly forgotten him as well as
her treachery to him, he had passively acquiesced in the results of that
forgetfulness and his own silence; he had been conscious that his
wound had healed sooner than he expected, but if this consciousness
had enabled him to extend a certain passive forgiveness to his wife
and Demorest, it was always with the conviction that his mysterious
effacement had left an inexplicable shadow upon them which their
consciences alone could explain. But for this unjust, vulgar, and
degrading interpretation of his own act of expiation, he was totally
unprepared. It completely crushed whatever sentiment remained of that
act in the horrible irony of finding himself put upon his defence before
the world, without being able now to offer the real cause. The anguish
of that night had gone forever; but the ridiculous interpretation of it
had survived, and would survive it. In the eyes of the man before him
he was not a wronged husband, but an absconding petty defaulter, whom he
had just detected!

His mind was quickly made up. In that instant he had resolved upon a
step as fateful as his former one, and a fitting climax to its results.
For five years he had clearly misunderstood his attitude towards his
treacherous wife and perjured friend. Thanks to this practical, selfish
machine before him, he knew it now.

"Look here, Corwin," he said, turning upon Ezekiel a colorless face,
but a steady, merciless eye. "I can guess, without your telling me, what
lies may be circulated about me by the man and woman who know that I
have only to declare myself alive to convict them of infamy--perhaps
even of criminality before the law. You are not MY friend, or you would
not have believed them; if you are THEIRS, you have two courses open to
you now. Keep this meeting to yourself and trust to my mercy to keep it
a secret also; or, tell Mrs. Demorest that you have seen Mr. Johnson,
who is not afraid to come forward at any moment and proclaim that he
is Edward Blandford, her only lawful husband. Choose which course you
like--it is nothing more to me."

"Wa'al, I reckon that, as far as I know Mrs. Demorest," said Ezekiel,
dryly, "it don't make the least d