"Dear Lady Darrell," said the girl, "I have never spoken a loving word to you before; but I tell you now that, if I could give my life to save you from this sorrow, I would do so."
"Aubrey Langton a thief!" cried Lady Darrell. "It is not true—I will swear that it is not true! I love him, and you want to take him from me. How could you dare to invent such a falsehood of him, a soldier and a gentleman? You are cruel and wicked."
Yet through all her passionate denials, through all her bitter anger, there ran a shudder of deadly fear—a doubt that chilled her with the coldness of death—a voice that would be heard, crying out that here was no wrong, no falsehood, but the bare, unvarnished truth. She cast it from her—she trampled it under foot; and the girl kneeling at her feet suffered as much as she did herself while she watched that struggle.
"You say that he would have murdered you—that he held a pistol to your forehead, and made you take that oath—he, Aubrey Langton, did that?"
"He did!" said Pauline. "Would to Heaven I had told you before."
"Would to Heaven you had!" she cried. "It is too late now. I love him—I love him, and I cannot lose him. You might have saved me from this, and you would not. Oh, cruel and false!"
"Dearest Lady Darrell," said the girl, "I would wash out my fault with my heart's blood if I could. There is no humiliation that I would not undergo, no pain that I would not suffer, to save you."
"You might have saved me. I had a doubt, and I went to you, Pauline, humbly, not proudly. I prayed you to reveal the truth, and you treated me with scorn. Can it be that one woman could be so cruel to another? If you had but spoken half the truth you have now told me, I should have believed you, and have gone away; I should have crushed down the love that was rising in my heart, and in time I should have forgotten it. Now it is too late. I love him, and I cannot lose him—dear Heaven, I cannot lose him!"
She flung up her arms with a wild cry of despair. None ever suffered more than did Pauline Darrell then.
"Oh, my sin," she moaned, "my grievous sin!"