"
"Yes," Mollie answered, her white lips scarce able to form the words.
"For God's sake, take off that mask and show me your face!"
Without a word, he unclasped the cloak and let it slip on the floor; he
removed the flowing hair and beard, and with it the mask. And uttering a
low, wailing cry, Mollie staggered back--for there before her, pale as
herself, stood the man she loved--Hugh Ingelow!
CHAPTER XXIX.
WHICH WINDS UP THE BUSINESS.
He stood before her, pale and stern, his eyes fixed upon her, as a
culprit before his judge waiting sentence of death.
But Mollie never looked. After that one brief, irrepressible cry, she
had fallen back, her face bowed and hidden in her hands.
"You shrink from me, Mollie," Hugh Ingelow said; "you will not even look
at me. I knew it would be so. I know I deserve it; but if I were never
to see you again, I must tell you the truth all the same. Yes, Mollie,
recoil from me, hate me, spurn me, for the base, unmanly part I have
acted. It is not Doctor Oleander who is the dastard, the villain, the
abductor of weak women--it is I!"
She did not speak, she did not move, she made no sign that she even
heard him.
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