be told? She could bear all the rest, if only he might be ignorant of his mother's disgrace;—he, for whom all had been done! But no. He, and every one must know it. Oh! if the beneficent Spirit that sees all and pities all would but take her that moment from the world!
When Sir Peregrine asked her whether he should seat her on the sofa, she slowly picked herself up, and with her head still crouching towards the ground, placed herself where she before had been sitting. He had been afraid that she would have fainted, but she was not one of those women whose nature easily admits of such relief as that. Though she was always pale in colour and frail looking, there was within her a great power of self-sustenance. She was a woman who with a good cause might have dared anything. With the worst cause that a woman could well have, she had dared and endured very much. She did not faint, nor gasp as though she were choking, nor become hysteric in her agony; but she lay there, huddled up in the corner of the sofa, with her face hidden, and all those feminine graces forgotten which had long stood her in truth so royally. The inner, true, living woman was there at last,—that and nothing else.
But he,—what was he to do? It went against his heart to harass her at that moment; but then it was essential that he should know the truth. The truth, or a suspicion of the truth was now breaking upon him; and if that suspicion should be confirmed, what was he to do? It was at any rate necessary that everything should be put beyond a doubt.
'Lady Mason,' he said, 'if you are able to speak to me———'
'Yes,' she said, gradually straightening herself, and raising her head though she did not look at him. 'Yes. I am able.' But there was something terrible in the sound of her voice. It was such a sound of agony that he felt himself unable to persist.
'If you wish it I will leave you, and come back,—say in an hour.'
'No, no; do not leave me.' And her whole body was shaken with a tremour, as though of an ague fit. 'Do not go away, and I will tell you everything. I did it.'
'Did what?'
'I—forged the will. I did it all.—I am guilty.'
There was the whole truth now, declared openly and in the most simple words, and there was no longer any possibility that he should doubt. It was very terrible,—a terrible tragedy. But to him at this present moment the part most frightful was his and her present position. What should he do for her? How should he counsel her? In what way so act that he might best assist her without compromising that high sense of right and wrong which in him was a second nature. He felt at the moment that he would
