“You need not look as if you thought me mad, for I tell you it is Heaven's truth! You say right—he loved me; but for that love he would be living now!”
“You speak in riddles which I cannot read. How could that love have caused his death, since his dearest wishes were to be granted to-night?”
“He told you that, did he?”
“He did. He told me you were to remove your mask; and if, on seeing you, he still loved you, you were to be his wife.”
“Then woe to him for ever having extorted such a promise from me! Oh, I warned him again, and again, and again. I told him how it would be—I begged him to desist; but no, he was blind, he was mad; he would rush on his own doom! I fulfilled my promise, and behold the result!”
She pointed with a frantic gesture to the plague-pit, and wrung her beautiful hands with the same moaning of anguish.
“Do I hear aright?” said Sir Norman, looking at her, and really doubting if his ears had not deceived him. “Do you mean to say that, in keeping your word and showing him your face, you have caused his death?”
“I do. I had warned him of it before. I told him there were sights too horrible to look on and live, but nothing would convince him! Oh, why was the curse of life ever bestowed upon such a hideous thing as I!”
Sir Norman gazed at her in a state of hopeless bewilderment. He had thought, from the moment he saw her first, that there was something wrong with her brain, to make her act in such a mysterious, eccentric sort of way; but he had never positively thought her so far gone as this. In his own mind, he set her down, now, as being mad as a March hare, and accordingly answered in that soothing tone people use to imbeciles,
“My dear Madame Masque, pray do not excite yourself, or say such dreadful things. I am sure you would not willfully cause the death of any one, much less that of one who loved you as he did.”