"What has he to forgive?" asked Anthony, impatiently. "Are not his own hard-heartedness and his hatred of Richard Malvine, the cause of all this misery?"
"His hard-heartedness and hatred have done much," said Luke, "but neither of these is the cause of Urith's condition. That is your own doing."
"Mine?" Though he asked the question, yet he answered it to himself, for his head sank, and he did not look his cousin in the face.
"Yes—yours," replied Luke. "It was your unfaithfulness to Urith that drove her——"
"I was not unfaithful," interrupted Anthony.
"You hovered on the edge of it—sufficiently near infidelity to make her believe you had turned your heart away from her for another. There was the appearance, if not the reality, of treason. On that Fox worked, and wrought her into a condition of frenzy in which she was not responsible for what she said and did. From that she has not recovered."
"Curse Fox!" swore Anthony, clenching his hands.
"No, rebuke and condemn yourself," said Luke. "Fox could have fired nothing had not you supplied the fuel."
Anthony remained with his head bowed on the table. He put up his hands to it, and did not speak for some time. At last he lowered his hands, laid the palms on the table, and said, frankly, "Cousin! sister! I am to blame. I confess my fault freely, and I would give the whole world to undo the past."