Believe me, Mollie, a trap was laid for you,
and you were caught in it. You never met 'Black Mask' that night."
"If I thought so!" Mollie cried, clasping her hands.
"You will find it so," Hugh Ingelow said, very quietly. "Let that be
Doctor Oleander's punishment. Make him confess his fraud--make him
confess Mrs. Walraven aided and abetted him--to-night."
"How can I?"
"Simply enough. Accuse him and her before us all. There will be no one
present you can not trust. Your guardian, Sir Roger, and myself know
already. Sardonyx is Mr. Walraven's lawyer, and silence is a lawyer's
forte."
"Well?" breathlessly.
"Accuse him--threaten him. Tell him you know his whole fraud from first
to last. Accuse her! Tell him if he does not prove to your satisfaction
he is the man who carried you off and married you, or if he refuses to
own he is not the man, that he will go straight from the house to
prison. He knows you can fulfill the threat. I think it will succeed."
"And if he confesses he is not the man who married me--if he
acknowledges the fraud--what then?"
"Ah! what then? Doctor Oleander will not be your husband.
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