She nodded without looking up at his white, awfully stern face, and he continued:
“You had been carrying on with Lord Stuart a flirtation more shameless than I suspected, and this valet became cognizant of the truth and threatened you with exposure. To save your good name you murdered him. Hush! do not perjure yourself with useless denials. I shall not betray you. I will keep your hideous secret for the sake of the love I had for you in the past.”
“Oh, my God, do not desert me, Norman! I am innocent! Lord Stuart will tell you that it was the most harmless flirtation,” she cried, in terror and entreaty.
He unlocked a drawer and took out a bouquet of faded red roses with their awful stains, shuddering as he touched them. From among them he took out a sheet of blood-dyed paper on which was the crest of a noble house. Unfolding the paper, he said:
“I can not believe, Camille, that any man would dare write such lines as these to a married woman unless there was some secret guilty consciousness between them.”
He read aloud, in tones vibrant with scorn:
“‘Ah! one thing worth beginning,
One thread in life worth spinning;
Ah, sweet, one sin worth sinning
With all the whole soul’s will.