“Man, spare your reproaches! I am passing from earth, and if repentance and faith avail me, going to that other world, where I shall receive my dear one’s forgiveness. You may spare your reproaches, as indeed I do not know how, or by what right, you, of all men, dare to make them,” said Hereward, with more dignity than he had hitherto shown.
“I speak by the most sacred right that a man could have to speak,” solemnly replied Ancillon.
“What are you to Lilith, or what was Lilith to you? A man may not know all his wife’s relations. You may be of Lilith’s kindred—and, indeed, I notice a likeness between your faces—but you cannot be of very near kindred.”
“No?” queried Ancillon, with a wistful look.
“No!” repeated Hereward, with more emphasis than he had yet used in speaking—“No! for you are not her brother. I knew her father and mother; they were young people just married a year when Lilith was born. She was not only their first, but their only child. The father—ah me!—lost his life while rescuing me from drowning, a few days before Lilith was born. Her mother, shocked to death by the sudden bereavement, gave birth to her child and died. My father took the infant orphan from beside the dead mother, and brought her home to be his own adopted daughter. So that Lilith was an only child, and you could not be her brother.”
“No, I am not her brother,” assented Ancillon, with the same wistful look.
“And if you are merely her cousin, or even her uncle, the relationship in either case would not give you the right to take such liberties with her name and memory as you have taken, and are taking now.”
“But I am not either her uncle or her cousin,” said Ancillon, with the same inscrutable look.
“Then, in the name of Heaven, man! what are you, that you have dared to do as you have done?” demanded Hereward, with an excitement for which he was to pay in a dangerous reaction and depression.
“Mr. Hereward,” said Ancillon, with more gravity than he had lately exhibited, “I came here not only to ask that question which first I put to your conscience, but also to place in your possession a secret that I have hitherto guarded with the most jealous care, not only for my own sake, but even for yours, and most of all, for Lilith’s, that no sorrow should come to her gentle heart, no reproach to her spotless name; but now that she is gone I care not at all what doom may fall upon me, or what shame may confuse you.”