"While Calvin Van de Lear
lived in Kensington I was in revengeful temptation all the time. He has
escaped, and my soul is oppressed no more. Do you know, Agnes, that the
guilty accomplice of Calvin, his brother's wife, wrote all the worst
letters which anonymously came through the post?"
Agnes replied:
"I never suspected it. My heart was too full of you. But Mr. Salter told
me to-day that he unravelled it some time ago. Calvin Van de Lear showed
him, in a moment of egotism, the conquest he had made over an unknown
lady's affections, and passages of the correspondence. The keen old man
immediately identified in the handwriting the person who addressed him a
letter against us soon after his arrival in the East. But he did not
tell me until to-day. How did you know she was the person?"
Andrew Zane blushed a little, and confessed:
"Agnes, she used to write to me. Seeing the anonymous letters you
received, I knew the culprit instantly. It was that which precipitated
the flight. She feared that her anonymous letters would result in her
arrest and public trial for slander, as they would have done. The
magistrate promised me that he would issue his warrant for every person
who had employed the public mails to harass my wife, and when you
entered this room my darker passions were again working to punish that
woman and her paramour.
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