“Madame, compose yourself, I beseech you, and tell me what you mean. It is to my friend, Ormiston, you allude—is it not?”
“Yes—yes! surely you need not ask.”
“I know that he is dead, and buried in this horrible place; but why you should accuse yourself of murdering him, I confess I do not know.”
“Then you shall!” she cried, passionately. “And you will wonder at it no longer! You are the last one to whom the revelation can ever be made on earth; and, now that my hours are numbered, it matters little whether it is told or not! Was it not you who first found him dead?”
“It was I—yes. And how he came to his end, I have been puzzling myself in vain to discover ever since.”
She rose up, drew herself to her full majestic height, and looked at him with a terrible glance,
“Shall I tell you?”
“You have had no hand in it,” he answered, with a cold chill at the tone and look, “for he loved you!”
“I have had a hand in it—I alone have been the cause of it. But for me he would be living still!”
“Madame,” exclaimed Sir Norman, in horror.