Fair staggered up and put her hand through her mother’s to go; but, on reaching the door, she pulled it away, and the next moment was staggering back with uncertain footsteps toward her lover, saying wildly:
“No, let me stay! I—I—cannot be—a coward—any longer. I must tell him all.”
And she knelt down as before by the bed, and looked with anguished eyes into her lover’s face.
CHAPTER XXV.
A BITTER CONFESSION.
They looked at her with astonishment. What did she have to tell?
Nothing, surely. Her brain was turned by the horror of what had happened, that was all.
But, with a strong effort, she controlled herself, and, looking at him with sorrowful eyes, dim with despair, she said:
“You do not understand me, and you think I am insane, do you not? Alas, it is a wonder that I am not! Oh, Bayard, I am the most wretched woman! I am the victim of circumstances the most tragic that ever darkened a woman’s life.”
Mrs. Howard and Bayard Lorraine began to believe that there was some method in her madness. There was an intensity of passion in her clasped hands and upraised eyes that foreboded ill. They gazed at her with new interest and attention.
“Alas,” she said mournfully, “I have a bitter confession to make: and remember, Bayard, that though it may prove a deep disappointment to you, it has all the bitterness of death to me. Oh, how I have struggled to throw off this burden of fate, but it is too heavy. I am crushed beneath it, and my mother’s dying words have all come true. There is nothing but misery and despair in store for her poor child.”