What Was Behind the Mask

"Madame, compose yourself, I beseech you, and tell me what you mean. It
is to my friend, Ormiston, you allude--is it not?"

"Yes--yes! surely you need not ask."

"I know that he is dead, and buried in this horrible place; but why you
should accuse yourself of murdering him, I confess I do not know."

"Then you shall!" she cried, passionately. "And you will wonder at it no
longer! You are the last one to whom the revelation can ever be made on
earth; and, now that my hours are numbered, it matters little whether it
is told or not! Was it not you who first found him dead?"

"It was I--yes. And how he came to his end, I have been puzzling myself
in vain to discover ever since."

She rose up, drew herself to her full majestic height, and looked at him
with a terrible glance, "Shall I tell you?"

"You have had no hand in it," he answered, with a cold chill at the tone
and look, "for he loved you!"

"I have had a hand in it--I alone have been the cause of it. But for me
he would be living still!"

"Madame," exclaimed Sir Norman, in horror.

"You need not look as if you thought me mad, for I tell you it is
Heaven's truth! You say right--he loved me; but for that love he would
be living now!"

"You speak in riddles which I cannot read. How could that love have
caused his death, since his dearest wishes were to be granted to-night?"