The proud noble was shaking from head to foot. The veins swelled purple on his forehead. The sight of that slender weapon swept away his last doubt. Lady Hope shrank back from his side, but watched him keenly in her agony of guilt and dread. Her proud figure withered down, her features were locked and hard, but out of their pallor her great eyes shone with terrible brilliancy. Her husband's hands dropped at last, and he turned a look of such despairing anguish upon her that a cry broke from her lips.
"You—you condemn me?"
Lord Hope turned from her, shuddering.
"You know! you know!"
He remembered giving her this poniard on the very day of her crime. He had been in the habit of carrying it with him when travelling, and though sharp as a viper's tongue, it, with the daintily enamelled sheath, was a pretty table ornament, and she had begged it of him for a paper cutter. He had seen the sheath since, but never the poniard, and now the sight of it was a blow through the heart.
"I picked it up by her bed that morning, after the murder. There is a person in the castle who saw me take it from the place where it had fallen. If any one here doubts me, let them ask a person called Margaret Casey—let them ask her."
That moment the door of the room opened, and Hepworth Closs stood on the threshold. He had been informed of Lady Carset's illness, just as he was leaving the castle, and came back only to hear that she was gone. The scene upon which he looked was something worse than a death-chamber.
"Ask him if he did not see this poniard in her room while she lay unburied in the house."
Rachael turned her eyes upon her brother—those great, pleading eyes, which were fast taking an expression of pathetic agony, like those of a hunted doe.
"And you—and you!" she said, with a cry of pain that thrilled the heart of her wretched husband. "Has all the world turned against me? Old woman, what have I ever done to you that you should hunt me down so?"