‘You shall not believe it of me!’ she exclaimed vehemently. ‘I will not throw my good name away so recklessly. My father is sleeping still. He has been ill and weary lately, and I thought it kind to let him rest; but he would never forgive me for letting him sleep on whilst his daughter’s fair name was being called in question. Stay but one moment, Henri, and my father shall tell you that I speak the truth.’
She flew past him to the Doctor’s sleeping apartment as she spoke, and Henri de Courcelles, anxious to know the best or worst at once, stood where she had left him, gazing after her retreating form.
But in another moment a piercing cry of agony sent him to her side. He found her standing by the bed, staring at her father’s still, cold features.
‘He is gone!’ she exclaimed wildly. ‘See here, Henri, he is dead—dead, and can never now release me from my oath! O God! have pity on me!’
And with that she fell to weeping over the prostrate form.
‘Dead!’ echoed De Courcelles, momentarily awed into the reverence we all feel at the approach of the White King. ‘But now, at least, you are free to tell me the truth, Lizzie.’
‘Never!’ she cried. ‘My lips are sealed as his own for evermore. If I could keep my vow to the living, how much more do you suppose will I hold it sacred to the dead? Act as you think right, Henri, but I will never tell you the name of the mother of this child.’
‘Then all is over between us,’ he returned, as he slunk away, heartily ashamed of himself, and yet with a load lifted from his breast as he remembered that he had unconsciously, but surely, obeyed Maraquita’s behest, and might boldly claim the reward she had promised for it.
END OF VOL. I.