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Page 65
"Lied to me--you?" cried Echo, in dismay.
"I've been a living lie for months," relentlessly continued Jack,
nerving himself for the ordeal through which he would have to
pass.
"Jack," wailed Echo, shrinking from him on her knees, covering
her face with her hands.
"It's about Dick."
Echo started. Again Dick Lane had arisen as from out the grave.
"What of him?" she asked, rising to her feet and moving away from
him.
"He is alive."
Jack did not dare look at his wife. He sat with his face white
and pinched with anguish.
The young wife groaned in her agony. The blow had fallen. Dick
alive, and she now the wife of another man? What of her promise?
What must he think of her?
"I didn't know it until after we were engaged," pursued Jack;
"six months. It was the day I questioned you about whether you
would keep your promise to Dick if he returned. I wanted to tell
you then, but the telling meant that I should lose you. He wrote
to me from Mexico, where he had been in the hospital. He was
coming home--he enclosed this letter to you."
Jack drew from his pocket the letter which Dick enclosed in the
one which he had sent Jack, telling of his proposed return.
She took the missive mechanically, and opened it slowly.
"I wanted to be square with him--but I loved you," pleaded Jack.
"I loved you better than life, than honor--I couldn't lose you,
and so--"
His words fell on unheeding ears. She was not listening to his
pleadings. Her thoughts dwelt on Dick Lane, and what he must
think of her. She had taken refuge at the piano, on which she
bowed her head within her arms.
Slowly she arose, crushing the letter in her hand. In a low,
stunned voice she cried: "You lied to me."
Jack buried his face in his hands. "Yes," he confessed. "He
came the night we were married. I met him in the garden. He
paid that money he had borrowed from me when he went away."
Horror-struck, Echo turned to him. "He was there that night?"
she gasped. "Oh, Jack. You knew, and you never told me. I had
given my word to marry him--you, knowing that, have done this
thing to me?" Her deep emotion showed itself in her voice. The
more Jack told her the worse became her plight.
"I loved you." Jack was defending himself now, fighting for his
love.
"Did Dick believe I knew he was living?" continued the girl
mercilessly.
"He must have done so."
"Jack! Jack!" sobbed Echo, tears streaming down her face.
"What could I do? I was almost mad with fear of losing you. I
was tempted to kill him then and there. I left your father to
guard the door--to keep him out until after the ceremony."
Jack could scarcely control his voice. The sight of Echo's
suffering unmanned him.
"My father, too," wailed Echo.
"He thought only of your happiness," Jack claimed.
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