aid, and she spoke through her
clenched teeth, "if I had not loved, if Gerald had not been my soul's
life and I his, I would have stood upright and laughed in his face at the
devil's threats. Should I have feared? You know me. Was there a thing
on earth or in heaven or hell I feared until love rent me. 'Twould but
have fired my blood, and made me mad with fury that dares all. 'Spread
it abroad!' I would have cried to him. 'Tell it to all the world, craven
and outcast, whose vileness all men know, and see how I shall bear
myself, and how I shall drive through the town with head erect. As I
bore myself when I set the rose crown on my head, so shall I bear myself
then. And you shall see what comes!' This would I have said, and held
to it, and gloried. But I knew love, and there was an anguish that I
could not endure--that my Gerald should look at me with changed eyes,
feeling that somewhat of his rightful meed was gone. And I was all
distraught and conquered. Of ending his base life I never thought, never
at my wildest, though I had thought to end my own; but when Fate struck
the blow for me, then I swore that carrion should not taint my whole life
through. It should not--should not--for 'twas Fate's self had doomed me
to my ruin. And there it lay until the night; for this I planned, that
being of such great strength for a woman, I could bear his body in my
arms to the farthest of that labyrinth of cellars I had commanded to be
cut off from the rest and closed; and so I did when all were sleeping--but
you, poor Anne--but you! And there I laid him, and there he lies
to-day--an evil thing turned to a handful of dust."

"It was not murder," whispered Anne--"no, it was not." She lifted to her
sister's gaze a quivering lip. "And yet once I had loved him--years I
had loved him," she said, whispering still. "And in a woman there is
ever somewhat that the mother creature feels"--the hand which held her
sister's shook as with an ague, and her poor lip quivered--"Sister, I--saw
him again!"

The duchess drew closer as she gasped, "Again!"

"I could not rest," the poor voice said. "He had been so base, he was so
beautiful, and so unworthy love--and he was dead,--none knowing,
untouched by any hand that even pitied him that he was so base a thing,
for that indeed is piteous when death comes and none can be repentant.
And he lay so hard, so hard upon the stones."

Her teeth were chattering, and with a breath drawn