“It was not love I felt for her, but a blind infatuation that led me on to repeat my first crime time and again, until from very terror of detection I determined to quit the country. Evelyn encouraged me in this determination, until, just one day previous to that on which I was to have taken my departure for Europe, where I hoped to earn the wherewithal to repay the large sums I had purloined, I was arrested on the charge of forgery, a check having been presented at the bank bearing the signature of one of our wealthiest depositors, but written in a hand that was instantly recognized as my own. “I could almost have sworn it myself to be my own handwriting, so perfect and faultless was the imitation; but after the first shock of this awful accusation was over I recognized it as the work of my wife, who had often boasted of her talent in copying the handwriting of any person whose penmanship she had ever studied. “I made no charge against her at the time; indeed, I think the shock of the discovery deprived me for a time of my reason, and I remember nothing definitely until I recovered to find myself in a prison cell, branded as a felon, and doomed to years of confinement. “When at last, after five years’ imprisonment, the full realization of my position was brought home to me, I swore a bitter and terrible oath of vengeance on the woman who had dragged me down to the lowest depths of degradation, on her and her offspring forever. “I was allowed a limited communication with friends in the outside world, who had known and respected me in the days of my prosperity, and from them I learned that Evelyn, who had succeeded in obtaining a divorce from me, had married a retired merchant named Oscar Hilton, and was living the luxurious life of which she had been always so fond. “From these friends, also, I learned that she had given birth, some two months previous to her marriage with Hilton, to a female child, to whom, after her usual romantic notions, she had given the name of Cleopatra’s handmaiden, Iris. “I believed at the time, as I believe now, that you, Iris, are my child as surely as you are Evelyn Hilton’s, and I claim an equal right to your obedience. “I have no love for you, I must tell you frankly; you are too much like the woman who has cursed my life, and made me the reckless wretch I am to-day. You are beautiful as a siren, with the fatal beauty that lured me to destruction, and I have resolved that you shall never betray a good man’s trust as your mother betrayed mine. “You are my child, Iris Trisilian, and you shall stay with me and do my bidding; nay, it is useless for you to glance so significantly toward the door--as well might a bird hope to escape the toils of a charmer, as you expect to leave my care.”