further objection to making the engagement public property. I had noticed that she had been very strange in her manner for some days. Now, suddenly, without the least warning, she broke down completely. She—she told me everything. Her hatred of her brute of a husband, her growing love for me, and the—the dreadful means she had taken. Poison! My God! It was murder in cold blood.”
I saw the repulsion, the horror, in Ackroyd’s face. So Mrs. Ferrars must have seen it. Ackroyd’s is not the type of the great lover who can forgive all for love’s sake. He is fundamentally a good citizen. All that was sound and wholesome and law-abiding in him must have turned from her utterly in that moment of revelation.
“Yes,” he went on, in a low, monotonous voice, “she confessed everything. It seems that there is one person who has known all along—who has been blackmailing her for huge sums. It was the strain of that that drove her