Читать книгу Buffalo Bill's Best Bet; Or, A Sure Thing Well Won онлайн

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“Then do so: life has no charm for me now, and I have often sought death, but it would not come to me.”

“You speak falsely, Kenton, for you have ever clung to life with strange tenacity.”

“Once I did; but, Kate, since—since——”

“I am listening, sir.”

“Since that night that—that——”

“Let me complete your sentence; since the night you saw me raise to my lips the fatal drug you had prepared for me, you have been haunted by a phantom.”

“Yes, Kate, and bitterly have I been punished for that crime. I was mad then, for I knew that you loved me, and I loved you more than all else in the world; but I owed large gambling and others debts, and had no money to pay them with. I had an opportunity to marry an heiress, who was to turn over into my keeping her vast wealth.

“My marriage to you was a secret one, and none knew of it, and, driven to desperation by my debts, I one night prepared two glasses with poison, intending that you should drink the one and I the other, and we would die together.

“Coward that I was, I saw you drink the fatal draft, though I touched not my lips to mine; and before I could summon aid you were, as I believed, dead. Oh, Kate! No one knows my misery then. In terror I fled and sought a refuge amid wild scenes and wilder men.”