The ejaculation that broke from Errington's lips as he finished reading this letter was more powerful than reverent. Stinging tears darted to his eyes--he pressed his lips passionately on the fair writing.
"My darling--my darling!" he murmured. "What a miserable misunderstanding!"
Then without another moment's delay he rushed into Neville's study and cried abruptly-"Look here! It's all your fault."
"My fault!" gasped the amazed secretary.
"Yes--your fault!" shouted Errington almost beside himself with grief and rage. "Your fault, and that of your accursed wife, Violet Vere!"
And he dashed the letter, the cause of all the mischief, furiously down on the table. Neville shrank and shivered,--his grey head drooped, he stretched out his hands appealingly.
"For God's sake, Sir Philip, tell me what I've done?" he exclaimed piteously.
Errington strode up and down the room in a perfect fever of impatience.
"By Heaven, it's enough to drive me mad!" he burst forth.
"Your wife!--your wife!--confound her! When you first discovered her in that shameless actress, didn't I want to tell Thelma all about it--that very night?--and didn't you beg me not to do so? Your silly scruples stood in the way of everything! I was a fool to listen to you--a fool to meddle in your affairs--and--and I wish to God I'd never seen or heard of you!"
Neville turned very white, but remained speechless.
"Read that letter!" went on Philip impetuously. "You've seen it before! It's the last one I wrote to your wife imploring her to see you and speak with you. Here it comes, the devil knows how, into Thelma's hands. She's quite in the dark about your secret, and fancies I wrote it on my own behalf! It looks like it too--looks exactly as if I were pleading for myself and breaking my heart over that detestible stage-fiend--by Jove! it's too horrible!" And he gave a gesture of loathing and contempt.
Neville heard him in utter bewilderment. "Not possible!" he muttered. "Not possible--it can't be!"
"Can't be? It is!" shouted Philip. "And if you'd let me tell Thelma everything from the first, all this wouldn't have happened. And you ask me what you've done! Done! You've parted me from the sweetest, dearest girl in the world!"
And throwing himself into a chair, he covered his face with his hand and a great uncontrollable sob broke from his lips.
Neville was in despair. Of course, it was his fault--he saw it all clearly. He painfully recalled all that had happened since that night at the Brilliant Theatre when with a sickening horror he had discovered Violet Vere to be no other than Violet Neville,--his own little violet! . . . as he had once called her--his wife that he had lost and mourned as though she were some pure dead woman lying sweetly at rest in a quiet grave. He remembered Thelma's shuddering repugnance at the sight of her,--a repugnance which he himself had shared--and which made him shrink with fastidious aversion, from the idea of confiding to any one but Sir Philip, the miserable secret of his connection with her. Sir Philip had humored him in this fancy, little imagining that any mischief would come of it--and the reward of his kindly sympathy was this,--his name was compromised, his home desolate, and his wife estranged from him!