"You have, indeed!" said Sir Norman, gravely, having listened, much

shocked and displeased, at this open confession; "and to one of them it

is beyond our power to atone. Do you know the life of misery to which

she has been assigned?"

"I know it all, and have repented for it in my own heart, in dust

and ashes! Even I--unlike all other earthly creatures as I am--have a

conscience, and it has given me no rest night or day since. From that

hour I have never lost sight of them; every sorrow they have undergone

has been known to me, and added to my own; and yet I could not, or would

not, undo what I had done. Leoline knows all now; and she will tell

Hubert, since destiny has brought them together; and whether they will

forgive me I know not. But yet they might; for they have long and happy

lives before them, and we can forgive everything to the dead."

"But you are not dead," said Sir Norman; "and there is repentance and

pardon for all. Much as you have wronged them, they will forgive you;

and Heaven is not less merciful than they!"

"They may; for I have striven to atone. In my house there are proofs and

papers that will put them in possession of all, and more than all, they

have lost. But life is a burden of torture I will bear no longer. The

death of him who died for me this night is the crowning tragedy of my

miserable life; and if my hour were not at hand, I should not have told

you this."

"But you have not told me the fearful cause of no much guilt and

suffering. What is behind that mask?"

"Would you, too, see?" she asked, in a terrible voice, "and die?"

"I have told you it is not in my nature to die easily, and it is

something far stronger than mere curiosity makes me ask."

"Be it so! The sky is growing red with day-dawn, and I shall never see

the sun rise more, for I am already plague-struck!"

That sweetest of all voices ceased. The white hands removed the

mask, and the floating coils of hair, and revealed, to Sir Norman's

horror-struck gaze, the grisly face and head, and the hollow

eye-sockets, the grinning mouth, and fleshless cheeks of a skeleton!

He saw it but for one fearful instant--the next, she had thrown up both

arms, and leaped headlong into the loathly plague-pit. He saw her for

a second or two, heaving and writhing in the putrid heap; and then the

strong man reeled and fell with his face on the ground, not feigning,

but sick unto death. Of all the dreadful things he had witnessed that

night, there was nothing so dreadful as this; of all the horror he had

felt before, there was none to equal what he felt now. In his momentary

delirium, it seemed to him she was reaching her arms of bone up to drag

him in, and that the skeleton-face was grinning at him on the edge of

the awful pit. And, covering his eyes with his hands, he sprang up, and

fled away.




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