"I think you offered it to me in exchange for Dr. West's letters to
Mrs. Saltonstall," returned Prince, dryly. "The less said about
that, the less is likely to be said about compromising letters
written by the widow to the Doctor, which she got you to recover--
letters which they may claim had a bearing on the case, and even
lured him to his fate."
For an instant Captain Carroll recoiled before the gulf which
seemed to open at the feet of the unhappy family. For an instant a
terrible doubt possessed him, and in that doubt he found a new
reason for a certain changed and altered tone in Maruja's later
correspondence with him, and the vague hints she had thrown out of
the impossibility of their union. "I beg you will not press me to
greater candor," she had written, "and try to forget me before you
learn to hate me." For an instant he believed--and even took a
miserable comfort in the belief--that it was this hideous secret,
and not some coquettish caprice, to which she vaguely alluded. But
it was only for a moment; the next instant the monstrous doubt
passed from the mind of the simple gentleman, with only a slight
flush of shame at his momentary disloyalty.
Prince, however, had noticed it, not without a faint sense of
sympathy. "Look here!" he said, with a certain brusqueness, which
in a man of his character was less dangerous than his smoothness.
"I know your feelings to that family--at least to one of them--and,
if I've been playing it pretty rough on you, it's only because you
played it rather rough on ME the last time you were here.
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