“NO--no! I am not mad--pray Heaven I were! Oh, that they had strangled me in the first hour of my birth, as they would a viper, rather than I should have lived through all this life of misery and guilt, to end it by this last, worst crime of all!” Sir Norman stood and looked at her still with a dazed expression. He knew well enough whose murderer she called herself; but why she did so, or how she could possibly bring about his death, was a mystery altogether too deep for him to solve. “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?” “He told you that, did he?” “He did. He told me you were to remove your mask; and if, on seeing you, he still loved you, you were to be his wife.” “Then woe to him for ever having extorted such a promise from me! Oh, I warned him again, and again, and again. I told him how it would be--I begged him to desist; but no, he was blind, he was mad; he would rush on his own doom! I fulfilled my promise, and behold the result!” She pointed with a frantic gesture to the plague-pit, and wrung her beautiful hands with the same moaning of anguish. “Do I hear aright?” said Sir Norman, looking at her, and really doubting if his ears had not deceived him. “Do you mean to say that, in keeping your word and showing him your face, you have caused his death?” “I do. I had warned him of it before. I told him there were sights too horrible to look on and live, but nothing would convince him! Oh, why was the curse of life ever bestowed upon such a hideous thing as I!”