"Better," it seemed to him that he heard her say, "better have slain me with him, upon his desolate hearth, than have spared me to learn this at last. Of you, you whom I worshipped, whom I so reverenced."
If he had doubted whether he lived or was already in the shades leading to another world, or in that world itself, he doubted no longer, when through that old crypt a second voice sounded, one known to him as well as Urbaine's was known--a voice deep, solemn, beautiful. Broken, too, as hers had been, yet sweet as music still.
"If," that voice said, "you had escaped with your lover to some far-distant land as I hoped, ay, as even such as I dared to pray that you might do, you would have learned all. In those papers I sent by him you love, you would have known all on the morning you became his wife. Now I must tell you with my own lips. Urbaine, in memory of the happy years gone by, the years when you grew from childhood to womanhood by my side, at my knee, hear my justification, let me speak."
It was Baville.
Baville! Her father's murderer there! Face to face with Urbaine once more!
For a moment the silence was intense, or broken only by the woman's sobs. Then from her lips he heard the one word "Speak" uttered.
"Urbaine, your father died through me, though not by my will, not by my hands."
"Ah!"
"I loved Urbain Ducaire," the rich, full voice went on. "Loved him, pitied him too, knowing something, though not all, of his past life. Knew that he, a Huguenot, was doomed if he stayed here in Languedoc, stranger though he was, for his nature was too noble to conceal aught; he was a Catholic who had renounced his ancient faith, a nouveau converti, yet of the wrong side for his future tranquility. And he boasted of it loudly, openly. He was doomed."
Again there was a pause broken only by the weeping of Urbaine. Then once more Baville continued: