"'Flesh and blood did not reveal it to me. Alice, Alice, how could I imagine such a thing of you?'
"'How, indeed!' murmured the wretched girl, weeping passionately. 'She persuaded me to bring it to you. He mixed the wine. I—I had nothing else to do with it.'
"'Yet to you, as a willing instrument of evil, they entrusted the most important part of their hellish mission.'
"She flung herself on her knees beside the bed, and raising her clasped hands and streaming eyes to Heaven implored God to forgive her for the crime she had premeditated against my life, binding herself in an awful curse, not only to devise means to save my life, but to remove me from the cottage.
"'As to you, Philip, I dare not ask you to forgive me: I only implore you not to curse me.'
"'I should entertain a very poor opinion of myself, if I should refuse to do the one, or attempt such an act of wickedness as is involved in the other. But, Alice, do not think that I can excuse the commission of such a dreadful crime as murder—and upon whom? A brother who loved you tenderly—who, to his own knowledge, never injured you in word, thought or deed.'
"'Philip, you are not my brother, or the deed had never been attempted.'
"'Not your brother! Who am I then?'
"'I cannot—dare not tell you. At least not now. Escape from this dreadful place, and some future time may reveal it.'
"'You talk of escape as a thing practicable and easy. I am so weak I can scarcely stand, much less walk ten paces from the house. How can I get away unknown to Dinah?'