“Then he had written me the truth; but his letter I never received, and I did not believe what he told me.” “Yet it was the truth.” “How do you know?” “I have his first wife’s written confession, in which she told all, and how her parents had told her not to speak of her love affair with you, as he was rich, you were not, having squandered much of your fortune in fast living. Her name was Dorothy Armand, and she left her confession with her jewelry and other things that my father placed in my mother’s keeping, and all of which she left to me.” “Yes, her name was Dorothy Armand, as you say; but she deceived me, and I would not believe her dying confession, or take my brother’s word, either, for they wronged me, and I never forgive a wrong.” “But my father never did you a wrong, whatever his wife did in deceiving him as to her engagement to you,” said Lucille warmly. “His name is Louis Fallon Lamar, and he was a colonel in the Confederate army, as I have said, and a Texan ranchero. He got me exchanged, I admit, and gave me money; but that did not atone for the past, and I hated him, for even in war he beat me, as he rose to be a colonel of cavalry, I only a captain of infantry. “He had married again, he told me, and had a daughter, but I was glad to feel that he was ruined by the war. What became of him then I never knew until I recognized him as a soldier in the United States army, and only a sergeant. “Then I remembered that I had heard that a Southerner of our name had killed a man in the East, and had fled to escape the gallows. “I wrote East, got the particulars, and found that it was my brother Louis. I have only hoped to capture him that I might send him back as a fugitive from justice to be hanged.” Lucille’s eyes flashed fire, and for a moment she did not speak. Then she said: “Let me ask you to look me in the eyes while I tell you what I know about what you have told me of my father.” “I am listening.” “My father did come out of the war ruined almost. He had married again, my mother being his second wife. He had felt keenly the unhappy circumstances of his first marriage, in fact, it cut him to the heart. He saved my mother’s father’s life at the risk of his own, was wounded by the shot intended for my grandfather, who took father to his home, where his daughter, my mother, nursed him through a long siege of suffering. My mother loved him, and he loved her, so they were married. “My father went North on business, accompanied a gentleman to his home one night with whom he had some business. Burglars broke into the house, and the host was shot down and robbed. Before he died he stated under oath that it was my father who had killed him, that they had a business deal on hand, that my father knew he had thousands of dollars in his home, and had come into his room at night and killed him.