On the day after the funeral, Karl sought his wife in the dressing-room to tell her of what had occurred. She had scarcely spoken a word to him since her return, or allowed him to speak one to her. Very briefly, in half a dozen words, he informed her his brother was dead, and delivered the message Adam had left for her. For a few minutes Lucy's bewilderment was utter; and, when she did at length grasp somewhat of the truth, her confusion and distress were pitiable.
"Oh, Karl, Karl, do you think you will ever be able to forgive me? What can I do?--what can I do to atone for it?"
"You must get up, Lucy, before I say whether I forgive you or not."
"I cannot get up. It seems to me that I ought never to get up again. Your brother at the Maze!--your brother's wife! Oh, what must you have thought of my conduct? Oh, Karl, why do you not strike me as I lie?"
Sir Karl put forth his arms and his strength, and raised her to the sofa. She bent her face down on its pillow, to weep out her tears of shame.
"Come, Lucy," he said, when he had waited a few minutes, sitting beside her. "We shall not arrive at the end in this way. Is it possible that you did not know my brother was alive?"
"How could I know it, Karl?" she asked, amid her streaming tears. "How was I likely to know it?"
"You told me you knew it. You said to me that you had discovered the secret at the Maze. I thought you were resenting the fact of his being alive. Or, rather, of my having married you, knowing that he was."
"Why should I resent it? How could you think, so? Was that the secret you spoke of in Paris the night before our wedding?--that Adam was alive."
"That, and no other. But I did not know then that he was married--or suspect that he ever would marry. I learnt that fact only during my mother's last illness."