"On yours and my own." Her eyes sank, and her hands played nervously with the handle of a small dainty leather bag she carried, as she paused. Then, looking up steadily, and speaking in a monotonous tone, as if she were repeating a lesson, with parched lips she went on: "I did you a great wrong some years ago. I was sorry, but I had not the courage to atone until I learned (only yesterday) that you had lost, or rather given up, your fortune, and that your engagement might be broken off. (I must speak of these things. You will forgive me before I come to an end.) Then I felt something stronger than myself that forced me to tell you all." Her heart beat so hard that her voice could not be steadied. She stopped to breathe.
"I fear you are exciting yourself needlessly," said Errington, quite bewildered, and almost fearing that his visitor's brain was affected.
"Oh, listen!—do listen! My uncle, John Liddell, your father's old friend, left all his money to you. I hid the will, and succeeded as next of kin. The property amounts to something more than eighty thousand pounds, and I have not spent half the income, so there are some savings besides. Can you not live comfortably on that, and marry Lady Alice?"
Errington gazed at her for a moment speechless. A sigh of relief broke from Katherine. The color rose to her cheeks, her throat, her small white ears, and then slowly faded.
"I can hardly understand you, Miss Liddell. I fear you are under the effect of some nervous hallucination."
"I am not. I can prove I am not." She drew forth the packet inscribed "MS. to be destroyed," and laid it before him. "There is the will. Thank God I never could bring myself to destroy it. Here, pray read it." She opened the document and handed it to him.
There were a few moments' dead silence while Errington hastily skimmed the will. "I am most reluctantly obliged to believe you," he said at length. "But what an extraordinary circumstance! How"—looking earnestly at her—"how did it ever occur to you to—to—"
"To commit a felony?" put in Katherine, as he paused.
"No; I was not going to use such a word," he said, gravely, but not unkindly.
"If you have time to listen I will tell you everything. Now that I have told the ugly secret that has made a discord in my life, I can speak more easily." But her sweet mouth still quivered.