Moreover, he had gained his point. It was enough
for him to know that there was a certain secret in Steel's life, upon
which the wretch Abel had admittedly traded, even as his superior
Minchin had apparently intended to do before him. Only those two seemed
to have been in this secret, and one of them still lived to reveal it
when called upon with authority. The nature of the secret mattered
nothing in the meanwhile. Here was the motive, without which the case
against John Buchanan Steel must have remained incomplete. Langholm
added it to his notes--and trembled!
He had compunction enough about the major triumph which now seemed in
certain store for him; the larger it loomed, the less triumphant and the
more tragic was its promise. And, with all human perversity, an
unforeseen and quite involuntary sympathy with Steel was the last
complication in Langholm's mind.
He had to think of Rachel in order to harden his heart against her
husband; and that ground was the most dangerous of all. It was strange
to Langholm to battle against _that_ by the bedside of a weaker brother
fallen in the same fight. Yet it was there he spent the night.
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