'My grandfather died at the inn at Great Langdale, faltered Maulevrier.
'Your grandfather was brought to this house—ill—out of his wits. All cloud and darkness here,' said the old man, touching his forehead. 'How long has it been? Who can tell? A weary time—long, dark nights, full of ghosts. Yes, I have seen him—the Rajah, that copper-faced scoundrel, seen him as she told me he looked when she gave the signal to her slaves to strangle him, there in the hall, where the grave was dug ready for the traitor's carcass. She too—yes, she has haunted me, calling upon me to give up her treasure, to restore her son.'
'Yes,' cried the paralytic woman, suddenly lifted out of herself, as it were, in a paroxysm of fury, every feature convulsed, every nerve strained to its utmost tension; 'yes, this is Lord Maulevrier. You have heard the truth, and from his own lips. You, his only son's only son. You his granddaughter's husband. You hear him avow himself the instigator of a diabolical murder; you hear him confess how his paramour's husband was strangled at his false wife's bidding, in his own palace, buried under the Moorish pavement in the hall of many arches. You hear how he inherited the Rajah's treasures from a mistress who died strangely, swiftly, conveniently, as soon so he had wearied of her, and a new favourite had begun to exercise her influence. Such things are done in the East—dynasties annihilated, kingdoms overthrown, poison or bowstring used at will, to gratify a profligate's passion, or pay for a spendthrift's extravagances. Such things were done when that man was Governor of Madras as were never done by an Englishman in India before his time. He went there fettered by no prejudices—he was more Mussulman than the Mussulmen themselves—a deeper, darker traitor. And it was to hide such crimes as these—to interpose the great peacemaker Death between him and the Government which was resolved upon punishing him—to save the honour, the fortune of my son, and the children who were to come after him, the name of a noble race, a name that was ever stainless until he defiled it—it was for this great end I took steps to hide that feeble, useless life of his from the world he had offended; it was for this end that I caused a peasant to be buried in the vault of the Maulevriers, with all the pomp and ceremony that befits the funeral of one of England's oldest earls. I screened him from his enemies—I saved him from the ignominy of a public trial—from the execration of his countrymen. His only punishment was to eat his heart under this roof, in luxurious seclusion, his comfort studied, his whims gratified so far as they could be by the most faithful of servants. A light penance for the dark infamies of his life in India, I think. His mind was all but gone when he came here, but he had his rational intervals, and in these the burden of his lonely life may have weighed heavily upon him. But it was not such a heavy burden as I have borne—I, his gaoler, I who have devoted my existence to the one task of guarding the family honour.'
He, whom she thus acknowledged as her husband, had sunk exhausted into a chair near her. He took out his gold snuff-box, and refreshed himself with a leisurely pinch of snuff, looking about him curiously all the while, with a senile grin. That flash of passion which for a few minutes had restored him to the full possession of his reason had burnt itself out, and his mind had relapsed into the condition in which it had been when he talked to Mary in the garden.
'My pipe, Steadman,' he said, looking towards the door; 'bring me my pipe,' and then, impatiently, 'What has become of Steadman? He has been getting inattentive—very inattentive.'
He got up, and moved slowly to the door, leaning on his crutch-stick, his head sunk upon his breast, muttering to himself as he went; and thus he vanished from them, like the spectre of some terrible ancestor which had returned from the grave to announce the coming of calamity to a doomed race. His grandson looked after him, with an expression of intense displeasure.
'And so, Lady Maulevrier,' he exclaimed, turning to his grandmother, 'I have borne a title that never belonged to me, and enjoyed the possession of another man's estates all this time, thanks to your pretty little plot. A very respectable position for your grandson to occupy, upon my life!'
Lord Hartfield lifted his hand with a warning gesture.
'Spare her,' he said. 'She is in no condition to endure your reproaches.'
Spare her—yes. Fate had not spared her. The beautiful face—beautiful even in age and decay—changed suddenly as she looked at them—the mouth became distorted, the eyes fixed: and then the heavy head fell back upon the pillow—the paralysed form, wholly paralysed now, lay like a thing of stone. It never moved again. Consciousness was blotted out for ever in that moment. The feeble pulses of heart and brain throbbed with gradually diminishing power for a night and a day; and in the twilight of that dreadful day of nothingness the last glimmer of the light died in the lamp, and Lady Maulevrier and the burden of her sin were beyond the veil.