'Oswald,' he said, very softly, and his tone was the old loving tone he had ever been wont to use towards the friend of his youth. All the bitterness, the wild frenzied agitation of the last few hours, had died out from those pain-stricken but calm features.
'Edmund, why had you not confidence in me?' burst forth Oswald. 'Why have I only just heard of your trouble--of the trouble which drove you to this? I have ridden after you in all mad haste, but I come too late, too late perhaps by a very few minutes.'
Edmund's half-dimmed eyes gained life and fire again as he turned them towards the speaker.
'You know?'
'All!'
'Then you understand all,' said Edmund faintly. 'To have to lie to you, not to be able to meet your eye, that was the hardest trial I have had to bear. Now it is past. Today, this very day, you will be Master of Ettersberg.'
'At the cost of your life!' cried Oswald, in despair. 'I have known the secret long. That fatal picture had passed through my hands before you saw it. I kept it from you almost by force, for I knew that the sight of it would kill you. And it has been all in vain--the whole sacrifice has been in vain! One frank, outspoken word between us, this morning, and everything might have been settled and made smooth.'
Edmund replied with a sorrowful negative gesture.
'No, Oswald; that could never have been. I could not have borne the perpetual lie of such a life. I have tried for weeks, for months. You do not know what I have endured since the fearful hour of that discovery. Now all is well. You will enter upon your own, and my mother's name will remain unstained. It was the only way, the one solution!'
Oswald held the dying man in his arms. He saw that the time for help was past. It was impossible to stanch the blood, impossible to stay the fleeting life. He could but stoop to catch the last words from the lips which were about to close for ever.