“Will not?” she repeated, with a catch in her voice.
“Listen,” she resumed suddenly after a long, strained silence. “While I lay beside my darling Muireall, weeping and moaning over her, and she so fair, with such silence where the laughter had always been, I heard the door open. I looked up: it was Jasper Morgan.
“‘You are too late,’ I said. I stared at the man who had brought her, and me, this sorrow. There was no light about him at all, as I had always thought. He was only a man as other men are, but with a cold selfish heart and loveless eyes.
“‘She sent for me to come back to her,’ he answered, though I saw his face grow ashy-grey as he looked at Muireall and saw that she was dead.
“‘She is dead, Jasper Morgan.’
“‘Dead … Dead?’
“‘Ay, dead. It is upon you, her death. Her you have slain, as though with your sword that you carry: her, and the child she bore within her, and that was yours.’
“At that he bit his lip till the blood came.
“‘It is a lie,’ he cried. ‘It is a lie, Morag. If she said that thing, she lied.’