Sir Karl started as though he had been shot. His very lips turned of an ashy whiteness.
"Lucy! You cannot know it!"
"Heaven knows I do," she answered. "I have learnt it all this day. Oh, how could you so deceive me?"
Sir Karl's first act was to dart to the door that opened on the corridor and bolt it. He then opened the two doors leading to the chambers on either side, looked to see that no one was in either of them, shut the doors again, and bolted them.
"Sir Karl, this has nearly killed me."
"Hush!" he breathed. "Don't talk of it aloud, for the love of God!"
"Why did you marry me?" she asked.
"Why, indeed," he retorted, his voice one of sad pain. "I have reproached myself enough for it since, Lucy."
She was silent. The answer angered her; and she had need of all her best strength, the strength she had so prayed for, to keep her lips from a cruel answer. She sat in her low dressing-chair, gazing at him with reproachful eyes.
He said no more just then. Well-nigh overwhelmed with the blow, he stood back against the window-frame, his arms folded, his face one of pitiful anguish. Lucy, his wife, had got hold of the dreadful secret that was destroying his own peace, and that he had been so cunningly planning to conceal.