Northern Weekly Gazette. — 1907-09-21 (Stockton-on-Tees, Cleveland, England)

CHAPTER XIX  HIS WORST.  Face to face, yet not seeing each other, the two stood. Will could feel the frightened girl trembling, but he had no pity; never had it been farther from his heart. "Your mask is off," he said vindictively. "I know you for what you are, and you shall know me for what I am. You married rue to save yourself, to win a home. You married me for what I had. By heaven! Rhoda, you got a prize. You are bound to me by ties death alone can break; you swore to love and honour and obey me; you zre my wife, and what am IT A murderer!"  He almost hissed the terrible word out, and his hearer shrank away with a choking cry.  "I thought I could not frighten you," he said, folding his arms in grim and hideous triumph. "I thought you did not care what I did. You are the wife of a murderer. By heaven, it is true." No word, no answer, save the same gasping sob, the same 3hrinking movement.  "You shall hear the whole story," he went on, standing before her, a stern, determined figure.  "You shall know something of what I did and what I have suffered for you I killed my own brother Ay, you may well cry out, my wife. I had my secret, too, you see. Nay, you shall stay where you are, and hear me out. Do you remem bet that I left Hal and Gabriel Verrard fighting together? After that cornea the blank, the mystery only I could fill, only T could solve. I left them together, but I returned almost immediately, to find my brother alone. He had go!, the Worst of the fight, and Verrard being out of sight, he turned on me. We quarrelled—about you. We both loved you; we were rivals; and we fought, we oame to blows for a thing like you. I wrested his whip Item him, and struck him with all my force. Ile went down without a groan, and there he lay at my feet, a ghastly thing, to haunt me always' "I called him by name, but I could not touch !Tun. I knew that this was death. The horror of it was on me; not the horror or the knowledge ot my own guilt. I fled from the dead thing, and gave the alarm. Not until some one uttered the word murder did I think what I was, or understand what might befall me. One of your lovers UPe.d to say that there was a good deal of the animal in me; the brute's first instinct is selfreservation, is it not? It was not my first, but it Caine to me after with the thought of you; with the thought that one day I would be master here, an could offer you a, home worth your acceptance.  I sold my soul for you, Rhoda March, and I the reward which all .clien or women who love well do get.  "I pla.ified my part well. I had a plausible tale ready; I accounted for my time by a lie. What did a small sin matter? I let Gabriel Verrard be sacrificed, and my sister's heart be well-nigh broken for you, for you, 0 God! For you, who are not fit to touch her dress. Yes, for you, Who could he, and deceive, and trick, I sacrified her. I had Plenty of sophistries ready. She would get over her fancy for Verrard; it was better that she should .think a stranger guilty than know her own brother to be so. Oh, I had a score of such reasonings always at hand, and so, she had to suffer. /low did I do it, I wonder? My love for her was %1 023f4A:rod thiv in me. Even now, even now,