Читать книгу Joe Leslie's Wife; or, a Skeleton in the Closet онлайн

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“Let me keep these, Joe?” holding up the pictures and the scrap of paper.

“Certainly, and I most earnestly pray they may be the means of proving Lillian’s innocence. My life will be wrecked if she proves false.”

He did not seem to think of what a position his own secret action placed him in.

“We will hope for the best, Joe.”

“Whatever you discover must be a secret between myself and you. I shall in my own way decide what must be done.”

Darrell looked at his face while he spoke. He found nothing vindictive there—instead, he saw a look of deep pain.

To himself he thought:

“If I had done anything wrong, I would like to be tried by a judge like Joe Leslie—he would be merciful. If his wife has erred, he is not the man to shoot her down—he would fight like a tiger in her defense—but I believe under such painful circumstances Joe would cry like a baby—and forgive her.”

That was his estimate of the man he had known so long—he forgot just then that Joe was also under a cloud, and that there was something in his life that needed the calcium light of an investigation thrown upon it.