Would you like
to hear it?"
Richard nodded, and Victor read aloud: "I, the blind man, Richard
Harrington, do hereby solemnly swear that the marriage of Arthur
St. Claire and Nina Bernard, performed by me and at my house, is
null and void,"
"What! Read it again! It cannot be that I heard aright," and
Richard listened while Victor repeated the lines. "Arthur and
Nina! Was she the young girl wife, he, the boy husband, who came
to me that night?" Richard exclaimed. "Why have I never known of
this before? Why did Edith keep it from me? Say, Victor," and
again Richard listened, this time, oh, how eagerly, while Victor
told him what he knew of that fatal marriage, kept so long a
secret, and as he listened, the beaded drops stood thickly upon
his forehead and gathered around his ashen lips, for Victor
purposely let fall a note of warning which shot through the
quivering nerves of the blind man like a barbed burning arrow,
wringing from him the piteous cry,
"Oh, Victor, Victor, does she--does Edith love Arthur? Has she
loved him all the time? Is it this which makes her voice so sad,
her step so slow? Speak--better that I know it now than after 'tis
too late.
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