“Why do you not answer me?” she pursued, while she leaned nearer with wonder, and doubt, and a certain awakening dread shadowing the blue luster of her eyes that were bent so thoughtfully, so searchingly, upon him. “Is it possible that you have heard of your inheritance, of your title and estates, and that you voluntarily remain a soldier here? Lord Royallieu must yield them in the instant you prove your identity, and in that there could be no difficulty. I remember you well now, and Philip, I am certain, will only need to see you once to—”
“Hush, for pity's sake! Have you never heard—have none ever told you——”
“What?”
Her face grew paler with a vague sense of fear; she knew that he had been equable and resolute under the severest tests that could try the strength and the patience of man, and she knew, therefore, that no slender thing could agitate and could unman him thus.
“What is it I should have heard?” she asked him, as he kept his silence.
He turned from her so that she could not see his face.
“That, when I became dead to the world, I died with the taint of crime on me!”
“Of crime?”
An intense horror thrilled through the echo of the word; but she rose, and moved, and faced him with the fearless resolve of a woman whom no half-truth would blind, and no shadowy terror appall.
“Of crime? What crime?”