"The Lord knoweth!" was her cool answer.
"The Lord look upon it, and avenge us!" I cried. "Do you know how I loved you? Next to my love for Guy himself,—better than I loved any other, save you two, in earth or Heaven! You!—was it you I loved? My sister Sybil loved Guy, and would have died rather than sacrifice him to a mob of parvenu nobles. She is gone, and you are come in her stead, the saints know how! You are not the Sybil whom I loved, but a stranger,—a cold, calculating, politic, false-hearted woman. Heartless, ungenerous, faithless, false! I sweep you out of my heart this day, as if you had never entered it. You are false to Guy, and false to God. I will never, never, never forgive you! From this hour you are no more to me than the meanest Paynim idolatress whom I would think scorn to touch!"
I do not know whence my words came, but they poured out of me like the rain in a tempest. I noted, without one spark of relenting, the shudder which shook her again from head to foot when I named Guy,—the trembling of lips and eyes,—the pitiful, appealing look. No, I would not spare one atom of misery to the woman who had broken my Guy's heart.
Perhaps I was half mad. I do not know.
When I stopped, at last, she only said—
"It must look so to thee. But trust me, Helena."
"Trust you, Lady Sybil!—how to trust you?" I cried. "Have I not trusted you these four years, before I knew you for what you are? And you say, 'Trust me!'—Hear her, holy Saints! Ay, when I have done trusting the scorpions of this land and the wolves of my own,—trust me, I will trust you!"
She rose, and came to me, holding out both hands, with a look of piteous appeal in those fair grey eyes that I used to love so much.
"I know," she said,—"I know. Thou must think so. Yet,—trust me, Helena!"
I broke from her, and fled. I felt as if I could not bear to touch her,—to look at her another moment. To my own chamber I ran, and casting myself on the bed, I buried my face in the pillow, and lay there motionless. I did not weep; my eyes were dry and hard as stones. I did not pray; there was no good in it. Without God, without hope, without any thing but crushing agony and a sense of cruel wrong,—I think in that hour I was as near Hell as I could be, and live.