Freeman's wife."

"But his wife died. He identified her in the Morgue."

"I do not know why I speak to you so, but I feel that the time has come
to tell all to you. That was not his wife in the Morgue. It was his
wife's sister, my sister whom my brother drowned for her money--he made
her life such a misery! And he did not try to save her when he knew she
meant to drown herself. She was not bad; she was a thousand times better
than I am, a million times better than he was. He was a devil. But he
is dead now too. . . . She was taken to the Morgue. She looked like
me altogether; she wore a ring of mine, and she had a mark on her
shoulder the same as one on mine; her initials were the same. Luke had
never seen her. He believed that I lay dead there, and he buried her for
me. I thought at the time that it would be best I should be dead to him
and to the world. And so I did not speak. It was all the same to my
brother. He got what was left of my fortune, and I got what was left of
hers. For I was dead, you see--dead, dead, dead!"

She paused again. Neither spoke for a moment. Shorland was thinking
what all this meant to Clare Hazard and Luke Freeman.

"Where is he? What is he doing?" she said at length. "Tell me. I was
--I am--his wife."

"Yes, you were--you are--his wife. But better if you had been that woman
in the Morgue," he said without pity. What were this creature's feelings
to him? There was his friend and the true-souled Clare.

"I know, I know," she replied. "Go on!"