Not heeding the tone of sneer in which she uttered this, I replied, “You are right, Señhora; he lived a life of terror and misery. He was a coward; and the man he had injured never ceased to track him from country to country. Over sea and land he followed him; the thirst for vengeance stimulating a heart dead to every other emotion. Accident, when I was a mere boy, brought me into close relation with poor Broughton.”
“With whom?” said she, grasping my wrist, while her eyes strained till the very blood started in them.
“Sir Dudley Broughton,” said I; but the words were not out ere she fell senseless on the floor. I raised her, and placed her on a sofa; and then, dipping her handkerchief in the fountain, bathed her temples and her lips. But she gave no sign of returning animation; her arms dropped powerless at either side; she did not even seem to breathe. What was I to do? I knew not where to find a bell to summon the servants, even should I dare to leave her. In my excitement, I believed that she was dead, and that I had killed her; aud then there darted through my brain the terrible conviction that this could be no other than Lady Broughton herself,—the unhappy Lydia Delmar. With a long-drawn sigh she at length awoke, and, opening her eyes, looked up at me. A convulsive shudder speedily followed, and she closed them again, and remained still, with her hands clasped tightly over her heart.
“Have I been dreaming a terrible dream,” said she, at last, in a weak and broken voice, “or are my dreadful thoughts realities? Tell me of what were we speaking?”
I did not answer. I could not tell her of the sad theme, nor did I dare to deceive her. In this dilemma I became silent; but my confusion did not escape her, and with a voice, every syllable of which struck deep into my heart, she said, “Is this secret your own, or have you ever revealed it to another?”
“I have never told it, nor, indeed, till now, was the full mystery known to myself.”
These few words, which served to confirm her own wavering terrors, at the same time that they showed how she herself had betrayed her dreadful secret, increased her suffering, and for a space she seemed overwhelmed by affliction.
“Let us speak of this no more,” said she at last, in the same hurried voice which once before had made me suspect the soundness of her intellect. “I cannot, I dare not, trust myself to dwell upon this theme; nor will I suffer any one to usurp an ascendency over me from terror. No, sir; you shall not deceive yourself by such a delusion. I have friends—great and powerful friends—who will protect me. I have money, and can buy the aid that outstrips patronage. Beware, then, how you threaten me!”
“You are unjust to me, lady,” said I, calmly, but resolutely. “I never meant to threaten. A mere accident hae put me in possession of a secret which, while you live, none shall ever hear from my lips; nor need you fear any allusion to it will ever escape me, to yourself.”
“Then let us part. Let us see each other no more,” said she, rising, and approaching a small ivory cabinet which she unlocked. “See, here is enough to satisfy the desire for mere money, if your heart be so set upon wealth that it has no other idol. Take these, and these, and these; they are gems of price, and taken from a royal crown. That necklace of rubies once graced the shoulders of an empress; and here are rings, whose value will buy long years of dissipation and excess.”