"This is not the priest's doing," she said, at length. "It is the wife's." Her voice steadied and became even as she spoke. "From the hour I found Count Lukstein dead I have lived only for this night."
I let my sword slip from my grasp, and it clattered and rang on the floor.
'Twas not surprise that I felt; ever since the shutters had been slammed I seemed to have known that she would speak those words. And 'twas no longer fear. Nor did I as yet wonder how she came by her knowledge. Indeed, I had but one thought, one thought of overwhelming sadness, and I voiced it in utter despondency.
"So all this time--in London, here, a minute ago, you were tricking me! Tricking me into loving you; then tricking my love for you!"
"A minute ago!" she caught me up, and there was a quiver in her voice of some deep feeling. Then she broke off, and said, in a hard, clear tone: "I was a woman, and alone. I used a woman's weapons."
Again she paused, but I made no answer. I had none to make. She resumed, with a flash of anger, as though my silence accused her:
"And was there no trickery on your side, too?"
They were almost the same words as those which Marston had levelled at me, and I imagined that they conveyed the same charge. However, it seemed of little use or profit to defend myself at length, and I answered:
"I have played no part. It might have fared better with me if I had. What deceit I have practised may be set down to love's account. 'Twas my fear of losing you that locked my lips. Had I not loved you, what need to tell you my secret? 'Twas no crime that I committed. But since I loved you, I was bound in very truth to speak. I have known that from the first, and I pledged myself to speak at the moment that I told you of my love. I dared not disclose the matter before. There was so little chance that I should win your favour, even had every circumstance seconded my suit. But this very night I should have told you the truth."
"No doubt! no doubt!" she answered, with the bitterest irony, and I understood what a fatal mistake I had made in pleading my passion before disclosing the story of the duel. I should have begun from the other end. "And no doubt you meant also to tell me, with the same open frankness, of the woman for whose sake you killed my--my husband?"