"It is no spirit, mademoiselle," said Dick, in a broken voice, "but a living man who might better be dead, for his last hope is killed, his faith crushed, his heart torn with misery! Oh, my God, my God! Oh, Catherine, Catherine!" And he fell prostrate on the couch, hiding his weeping eyes upon his arm, and yielding his body to be shaken by sobs.
Catherine stood looking at him, while her bewildered ideas approached a definite shape. But, before she could speak, he sprang to his feet, his grief having been succeeded by a wave of fierce and bitter reproach.
"So I was right when I called you faithless before the whole assembly that night!" he cried. "So you have fooled me from the first! Oh, was there ever such cunning? How I have been deceived by your guileless air, your innocent face, the truthful look of your eyes! Great God, is anything to be trusted in this world, when a woman who seems so pure and noble proves to be not only the harlot of a prince but the lying betrayer of an honest man, who loves her with all his soul? Why have you nothing to say?" he demanded, with a fresh access of rage. "Haven't you the grace to defend yourself? Oh, for God's sake, deceive me again! Lie to me, and I will believe you. Let me have any reason, even the smallest, to delude myself with the fancy that you are still mine. Deny these accusations! Deny that you expected the Landgrave here to-night."
"I cannot deny what is true," she said, quietly and sadly.
"Oh, you admit it!" he cried, wounded and enraged beyond all control. "You brazen Jezebel, I will kill you!" He grasped her by the neck, and, as she yielded instantly to his movement, forced her to her knees. As he made to clutch her throat she threw back her head, disclosing the white and delicate skin on which he formerly would not have inflicted the tiniest scratch for the world. "Oh, I cannot," he sobbed, pressing his lips against the tender throat, and breaking down completely. "Oh, Catherine, Catherine!" He raised her, and stood with his arms enfolding her. But, after a moment, he released her and stepped back, saying, plaintively, "To think that you are not mine to embrace! To think that you are the Landgrave's!"
"The Landgrave's!" she echoed. "No, not yet the Landgrave's, for you are not dead, and I am still a living woman."
"What do you mean?" asked Dick, startled into a kind of wild hope.
"He told me you were dead,—that you had been shot while trying to escape—"
"Who told you, Catherine? What do you mean? Tell me, quickly." He took her hand, and made her sit beside him on the couch.
"The Landgrave told me,—and Von Rothenstein, and others who were there. You see, I was at the hunt, with the Landgravine. We all heard of the terrible conspiracy, and of the arrests; and, while we were talking about it in the forest, the prisoners were taken by, where we could see them all,—the conspirators, arrested for high treason. And one of them was Gerard, my brother Gerard."