"How did you learn it?" he asked.
"I shall never tell you," she answered with quiet firmness, resolved not to make mischief by betraying Theresa. "I know it, and that is enough. Put it down, if you choose, that it was revealed to me by accident--or that I guessed at."
"But, Lucy, it is necessary I should know."
"I have spoken, Sir Karl. I will never tell you." The evening breeze came wafting into that room of pain; cooling, it might be, their fevered brows, though they were not conscious of it. Lady Andinnian resumed.
"The unpardonable deceit you practised on my father and mother----"
Sir Karl's start of something like horror interrupted her. "They must never know it, Lucy. In mercy to us all, you must join with me in concealing it from them."
"It was very wicked in you to have concealed it from them at all. At least, to have married me with such a secret--for I conclude you could not have really dared to tell them. They deserved better at your hands. I was their only daughter: all they had to love."
"Yes, it was wrong. I have reproached myself since worse than you can reproach me. But I did not know the worst then."
She turned from him proudly. "I--I wanted to tell you, Sir Karl, that I for one will never forgive or forget your falsehood and deceit; and, what I am about to say, I say for my father and mother's sake. I will keep it from them, always if I can; I will bury it within my own breast, and remain on here in your home, your ostensible wife. I had thought of leaving your house for theirs, never to return; but the exposure it would bring frightened me; and, in truth, I shrink from the scandal."
"What do you mean?" he exclaimed. "My 'ostensible' wife?"