'But you have satisfied yourself that that was not the case,' asked Humphrey Statham hurriedly. 'O, yes,' said Pauline; 'but not until a long time after I first saw them together, not until, so far as one of them was concerned, any feeling of mine was useless. I determined that if ever I saw this woman again I would be revenged upon her! Fortune stood my friend; I did see her; I became acquainted with the mystery of her story, and thus supplied myself with a weapon which could at any time be made fatal to her; I won your confidence,' turning to Martin, 'and made myself necessary to you all, and then, and not till then, did I discover how ill-founded and unjust had been my suspicions; not till then did I learn, by the merest accident, that Alice, instead of having been the mistress of my husband, who was dead by that time, was his sister.' 'Alice your husband's sister?' cried Martin Gurwood in amazement. 'And you were not aware of that fact until animated by false suspicions you had laid yourself out for revenge upon her?' 'Not until I had gained your confidence,' said Pauline, 'or at least taken the first steps towards gaining it. Not until that night at Hendon, when I was left alone with her, and when, while she was under the influence of the narcotic, I looked through her papers--you see I am speaking frankly now, and am desirous of hiding nothing, however much to my own disadvantage it may be--and discovered her relationship to my dead husband.' 'Who was your husband?' said Martin Gurwood in a softened voice. 'It is not likely that you ever heard of him,' replied Pauline. 'His name was Durham. In his last days he had some connection with the house of Calverley and Co., being sent out as an agent to represent them in Ceylon.' 'Durham!' cried Martin Gurwood. 'Surely I have some recollection of that name. Yes; I remember it all now. He was the man who mysteriously disappeared from on board one of the Peninsular and Oriental Company's ships, and who was supposed to have fallen overboard and been drowned on his passage out.' 'The same,' said Pauline; 'he was my husband.' 'Durham!' cried Statham. 'What was his Christian name?' 'Thomas. All his friends knew him as Tom Durham. 'Tom Durham; I knew him well--at one time intimately; but I had no idea that he was married, much less that you were his wife. I recollect now reading the paragraph about his supposed drowning the last time I left London on my holiday.' 'You knew Tom Durham well?' cried Pauline, clasping her hands. '_Mon Dieu_, I see it all! You are the H. S., whose letter I have here!' As she spoke she took a pocket-book from the bosom of her dress, and from it extracted a paper, which she handed to Statham.