Why?"
"I will tell you," he interrupted, gravely, and not without emotion.
"Pause, and I will explain my reasons, painful as it is to me to do
this, and greatly as I compromise myself by so doing, for, should you
choose to be indiscreet, I shall have gained a dangerous enemy. I have
no confidence in Evelyn Erie, in her truth, her sincerity, her honesty,
even. I would not place temptation in her way. There, that is why I
concealed the secrets of the spring-lock and recess in the wall from
her, to secure them for you. As to the depositing of gold in that iron
chest, I did it simply because I knew of no other place so safe and
secret. In my own house none such exists, and, as I never kept gold for
more than a few days after it was received, I thought it scarcely worth
while to place it in the vaults of the bank. As I tell you, it was
removed in September."
Surely no art was ever greater of its kind than that he manifested on
this trying occasion, yet it fell to the earth, like the shedding scales
of a serpent, before my simple discernment. Yet his words, his manner,
did in some strange and unexplained way greatly exonerate Evelyn in my
estimation, at least for a time, of complicity.
How could I consistently believe that two persons, entertaining of each
other such similar and degrading opinions, could trust one another
sufficiently to become confederates? Alas! I did not reflect that it is
of such conflicting elements conspirators and conspiracies themselves
are usually made, and that union of guilt creates eternal enmity.
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