Nevertheless, he would not believe her, but said again, passionately, “Unsay your words, Leam:  they offend me.”

“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.

“Oh, no! no! do not do that,” cried Leam, trying to unclasp his hands.  “Do not kneel to me.  I ought to kneel to you,” she added with a little cry that struck with more than pity to Edgar’s heart, and that nearly broke her down for so much relaxing of the strain, so much yielding to her grief, as it included.

“Leam, tell me you are joking—­tell me that you did not do this awful thing,” he cried again, his handsome face, blanched and drawn, upturned to her in agony.

She put her hands over her eyes.  “I cannot lie to you,” she said.  “And I must not degrade you.  Do not touch me:  I am not good enough to be touched by you.”

He loosened his arms, and she shrank from him almost as if she faded away.

“Why did you deceive me?” he groaned.  “You should not have let me love you, knowing the truth.”

“I did not know that you loved me, or that I loved you, till that night,” she pleaded piteously.  “If I had known I would have prevented it.  I have told you as soon as I remembered.”

“You have broken my heart,” he cried, flinging himself on the sofa, his face buried in the cushions.  And then, strong man as he was, a brave soldier and an English country gentleman, he burst into a passion of tears that shook him as the storm had shaken the earth last night—­tears that were the culmination of his agony, not its relief.