"No; it was true. It aches still, until I am almost blind with the pain. Oh, Everard, be merciful! Have a little pity for me, for I love you, and I am the most wretched creature alive!"
"You show your love in a singular way, my Lady Kingsland. It is not by keeping guilty secrets from your husband—by meeting other men by night and by stealth in the grounds—that you are to convince me of your love. Tell me what this mystery means. I command you, by your wifely obedience, tell me this secret at once!"
"I can not!"
"You mean you will not."
"I can not."
"It is a secret of guilt and of shame? Tell me the truth?"
"It is; but the guilt is not mine. The shame—the bitter shame—and the burning expiation, God help me, are!"
"And you refuse to tell me?"
"Everard, I have sworn!" she cried out, wildly. "Would you have me break a death-bed oath?"
"I would have you break ten thousand such oaths," he exclaimed, "when they stand between you and your husband! Harriet Hunsden, your dead father was a villain!"