I looked at Kildon and the group who stood with him; they immediately retired on tiptoe, and closed the cabin door. I was left alone with the dying man, who seemed to be considerably relieved by their absence, and said—
"I will see them all once more; but give me that cup again—the wine-and-water—thank you."
The draught revived him, and he said with a bitter smile—
"After all my fighting and all my battles, I die in my bed, like other people."
"Scarcely, Kœningheim, with that frightful wound."
"I was not always, as you may suppose, Albert Count of Kœningheim," said he with an effort, and a voice that trembled. "At home, in that dear land I never more shall see, I was but Habbie Cunninghame of the Boortree-haugh, a name which many in the north of Scotland must remember—but, alas! with abhorrence and reprobation. Yet, if you knew all—you would pity me."
He paused, and seemed to be gathering his thoughts; and, as he did so, an expression of dark despair and agony stole over his beautiful face—for it was beautiful in its supreme manliness.
"You may know what it is to feel love, and I have felt it too—and rage and hatred; but you can never have known what it is to feel, as I now do, the horrors of remorse. Oh, may you never, never know it!" He grasped my hand convulsively, and fixed upon me his dark and agonized eyes. "I would rather wish that even my worst enemy should die, than do as I have done—and endure what I have endured!..... Never until this hour have I told my secret to any one; it has been locked in my own breast. I have had none to whom I could confide it, or in whose presence I might without shame shed a tear. Laughter, sleep, drunkenness, the bottle, any thing was welcome, that would make me forget myself; for to be in solitude—to be left for one moment to reflection—was to be in—horror! and thus for thirty years I have borne grief, rankling like a poisoned arrow in my heart."
"Can this be the lion-hearted soldier of the Empire!" thought I.
"I am a murderer—I have been an assassin!" said he, in a low and terrible whisper; "do you not shrink from me?" His eyes closed, for they were full of tears, and thus he did not see the startled expression of my face. "Tears—tears! oh, that they fell on her grave! but do not shrink from me," he continued. "(I feel your hand relaxing.) I deserve your pity—rather than your scorn. Ah, yes!—if you knew all—if you only knew all! I have been bad—I have been passionate—wilful—obstinate—imperious! but not for many a long, long year."