"I would to God that I did not mean it!" he exclaimed, bestirring himself and trying to rise. "Get up, Cynthia; I cannot lie here and see you kneeling there. Rather let me kneel to you; for I have wronged you—I have wronged your father beyond forgiveness. It was I—I who killed Sydney Vane!"
He was standing now; but she still knelt beside the sofa, with her face full of terror.
"Hubert," she said caressingly, "you do not know what you say. Sit down, my darling, and keep quiet. You will be better soon."
"I am not raving," he answered her; "I am only speaking the truth. God help me! All these years I have kept the secret, Cynthia; but it is true—I swear before God that it is true! It was I who killed Sidney Vane. Now curse me if you will, as your father did long years ago."
He fell back on the sofa, and buried his face in his hands with a moan of intolerable pain.
There came a long silence. Cynthia did not move; she also had hidden her face.
"Oh," she said at last, "I do not know what to do! My poor father—my poor father! Think of the shame and anguish that he went through! Oh, how could you bear to let him suffer so?" And then she wept bitterly and unrestrainedly; and Hubert sat with his head bowed in his hands.
But after a time she became calm; and then, without looking up, she said, in a low voice—
"I should like to hear it all now. Tell me how it happened."
He started and removed his hands from his face. It was so haggard, so miserable, that Cynthia, as she glanced at him, could not forbear an impulse of pity. But she averted her head and would not look at him again.