"
"I cannot," said Leam.
He laughed scornfully. "Kill Madame de Montfort. Absurd! You could not.
It was impossible for a girl like you to kill any one," he cried in
broken sentences. "How could you do such a thing, Leam, and not be found
out? Silly child! you are raving."
"I put poison into the bottle, and she died," said Leam in a half
whisper.
"Leam! you a murderess!"
She quivered at the word, at the tone of loathing, of abhorrence, of
almost terror, in which he said it, but she held her terrible ground.
She had begun her martyrdom, her agony of atonement for the sake of
truth and love, and she must go through now to the end. "Yes," she said,
"I am a murderess. Now you know all, and why you must not love me."
"I cannot believe you," he pleaded helplessly. "It is too horrible. My
darling, say that you have told me this to try me--that it is not true,
and that you are still my own, my very own, my pure and sinless Leam."
He knelt at her feet, clasping her waist. He was not of those who, like
Alick, could bear the sin of the beloved as the sacrifice of pride, of
self, of soul to that love. He himself might be stained from head to
heel with the soil of sin, but his wife must be, as has been said,
without flaw or blemish, immaculate and free from fault. Any lapse,
involving the loss of repute should it ever be made public, would have
been the death-knell of his hopes, the requiem of his love; but such an
infamy as this! If true it was only too final.
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