stoop, pick up a large fragment of rock, and hurl it—­I saw Sir Robert fall, and then I grew sick and dizzy, and fainted.  When I recovered, Albert was watching me, trembling and livid.  I looked around, and there was Sir Robert, stretched out stiff and still and bloody.  He had worn nothing but a light cap on his head, and the stone had made a fearful dent in his temple.  I knelt beside him, and prayed, and chafed his hands, and brought water from the spring and poured it upon his face.  I hoped he would come to life, even if he would only revive to kill me.  It was all in vain.  He grew cold:  he was dead.  Again I looked at Albert—­he was shaking like a leaf.  ‘Bertha,’ he said, ’I am a lost man!  When Sir Sandrit knows this, I cease to live.’  I saw his danger, which did not until then occur to me, and I lost my concern for the dead in my fears for him.  I loved him better than anything in the world, and the devil, who knew my heart, suggested a scheme for his preservation.  The scarf of the Lord of Hers, which bore some family device, was grasped in the dead man’s hand, and I saw at once how strongly that circumstance implied the noble’s guilt.  I concealed the ring he had given me in my pocket.  ‘Come!’ I said to Albert, ’let us take the body to Sir Sandrit, and tell him that we found it in a spot from which we had just seen the Lord of Hers depart.’  He refused at first, and would not touch the body, but by argument and entreaty, I prevailed upon him to be guided by me.

“Sandrit of Stramen, you know the rest.  You know that we swore to have seen the Lord of Hers ride away from the fatal spot just before we found the body.  It was the fact; but my lover and I were perjured in the sight of God.  I do not wish to lighten my crime before men, when it is written out so plainly against me before Angels.  I was a perjured woman—­perjured through love and fear.  I heard you swear vengeance.  I wept, but I was silent.  I saw your fury and your wars.  My heart bled, but I was silent.  There was no rest, no sleep, no peace for me.  It was not my husband’s death that drove me mad.  Oh, no!  It was remorse.  There were spectres all around me—­I trembled before the innocent, fled before the guilty.  The caresses of my child that died at my breast tortured me.  I felt as though my breath had withered and defiled it.  Every hour was full of misery—­day and night there was a gnawing at my heart.  At last my mind gave way, and the justice of heaven struck him with death and me with madness!”

Bertha paused an instant, quite exhausted, then again exerting herself, she said: 

“I do not ask you to forgive me—­but forgive each other.”

“They have forgiven each other already,” said Father Omehr.  “They are friends.”

“Friends?”

“The Lady Margaret reconciled them on her death-bed.”

“The Lady Margaret dead!”

“She was buried this morning.”

“Yes,” said Bertha, “it was to her funeral I was going.  Yes, she is dead—­the beautiful, the young, the innocent—­she has been praying for me in heaven.”