“Was it so?” she feverishly repeated.

“Can you ask it, knowing me as you did then, as you must have known me since?  I never was false to you in thought, in word, or in deed.”

“Oh, Archibald, I was mad—­I was mad!  I could not have done it in anything but madness.  Surely you will forget and forgive!”

“I cannot forget.  I have already forgiven!”

“Try and forget the dreadful time that has passed since that night!” she continued, the tears falling on her cheeks, as she held up to him one of her poor hot hands.  “Let your thoughts go back to the days when you first knew me; when I was here, Isabel Vane, a happy girl with my father.  At times I have lost myself in a moment’s happiness in thinking of it.  Do you remember how you grew to love me, though you thought you might not tell it to me—­and how gentle you were with me, when papa died—­and the hundred pound note?  Do you remember coming to Castle Marling?—­and my promise to be your wife—­and the first kiss you left upon my lips?  And, oh, Archibald!  Do you remember the loving days after I was your wife—­how happy we were with each other?  Do you remember when Lucy was born, we thought I should have died; and your joy, your thankfulness that God restored me?  Do you remember all this?”

Aye.  He did remember it.  He took the poor hand into his, and unconsciously played with its wasted fingers.

“Have you any reproach to cast to me?” he gently said, bending his head a little.

“Reproach to you!  To you, who must be almost without reproach in the sight of Heaven!  You, who were everlasting to me—­ever anxious for my welfare!  When I think of what you were, and are, and how I quitted you, I could sink into the earth with remorse and shame.  My own sin, I have surely expiated; I cannot expiate the shame I entailed upon you, and upon our children.”

Never.  He felt it as keenly now as he had felt it then.

“Think what it has been for me!” she resumed, and he was obliged to bend his ear to catch her gradually weakening tones.  “To live in this house with your wife—­to see your love for her—­to watch the envied caresses that once were mine!  I never loved you so passionately as I have done since I lost you.  Think what it was to watch William’s decaying strength; to be alone with him in his dying hour, and not to be able to say he is my child as well as yours!  When he lay dead, and the news went forth to the household, it was her petty grief you soothed, not mine, his mother’s.  God alone knows how I have lived through it all; it as been to me as the bitterness of death.”

“Why did you come back?” was the response of Mr. Carlyle.

“I have told you.  I could not live, wanting you and my children.”

“It was wrong; wrong in all ways.”

“Wickedly wrong.  You cannot think worse of it than I have done.  But the consequences and the punishment would be mine alone, as long as I guarded against discovery.  I never thought to stop here to die; but death seems to have come on me with a leap, like it came to my mother.”