"Shame?" he breathed.
"Yes," she said, nerving herself; "shame! Now, prince, you know why it is that I cannot be your wife. Spare me, and let me go."
He stood, white as the marble faces looking down at him, his eyes fixed on her face, yet scarcely seeming to see her.
"Shame!" he repeated, like a man who speaks during some horrible dream.
Margaret tried to shrink from him, but his hand held hers in a clasp of steel.
"Shame and—you!" he said at last. "You! Oh, it is impossible." Then he looked in her face, bent low and humbly, like a drooping lily, and he uttered a faint cry. It was the cry of a man who has been mortally wounded.
There was silence for a moment, then he let her hand fall, and turned—not to forsake her, but to hide his face from her. Margaret waited a second, then crept closer to him.
"Will you—can you forgive me, prince?" she murmured brokenly. "I should not have come here, but—but I was sorely tempted. I was alone—alone, and craving for sympathy and love—and your mother and sister gave them to me. I had no right to enter their presence, much less to accept their love, but—ah, if you knew all!" and a sigh choked her voice.
"Tell me all," he said, turning to her almost sternly; "tell me all—all! The name of the man——" He stopped, and his hands clinched tightly at his side.