"Oh! my dear aunt, do not allow your imagination thus to obtain dominion over you!" interrupted Clarence. "Endeavour to compose yourself a little—if only a little—for it does me harm to see you thus! Besides, I have so much to say to you—so many questions to ask you—so much advice to give you——"
"Alas! the only counsel you can give me, Clarence," said the wretched woman, shaking with a cold shudder, though the perspiration stood in big drops upon her brow,—"the only counsel you can give me, Clarence, is to bid me prepare for another world."
"Is it possible?" cried Villiers, shocked by the appalling significance of these words: "have you no hope—no chance——"
"Would you believe me were I to assure you that I am not guilty of the crime imputed to me—the forgery of a draft upon the bankers of the late Sir Henry Courtenay?" demanded Mrs. Torrens, fixing her sunken, lustreless eyes upon her nephew. "No—no: you are convinced that I am guilty—and a jury will pronounce me to be so! Think not that I blind myself against all the horrors of my position! I know my fate—I know that I must die eventually by the hand of the executioner——"
"God have mercy upon you!" exclaimed Villiers, pressing his hand to his brow as if to calm the dreadful thoughts which his aunt's language excited in his brain.
"Yes, Clarence—that must be my fate," she continued: "unless I obtain a short respite—of a few months—by confessing——"
"Confessing what?" cried Clarence impatiently.
"Oh! no—not to you can I make that avowal!" she exclaimed, in a shrieking tone.
"But I understand you! Yes—a light breaks in upon me—and——"
"Do not spurn me altogether, Clarence!" said the wretched woman, throwing herself upon her knees before him and grasping one of his hands with convulsive tightness in both her own. "Oh! I know what you would reproach me with! If not for my own sake—yet for that of the unborn child which I bear in my bosom, I should have avoided this awful risk—recoiled from that fatal crime! But I was so confident of success—so certain of avoiding exposure,—and my affairs, too, were so desperate—without resources—Sir Henry Courtenay having disappeared in such a mysterious manner——"