Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 3.djvu/345

334 the dim shadowy rays of the lamp he could only see the paleness of her upturned brow. She longed to be sheltered even from his sight, in that hour. She had no fear but that the greatness of his nature would reach to mercy and to pardon. She knew that justice to the uttermost, and an infinite tenderness, would ever be hers at his hands. But none the less she knew that through her he would perish; and none the less were the shame that she must reveal against her race, the taint of cowardly crime that must rest on her by implication, the degradation of her name that she must lay bare before him, bitter beyond all bitterness to the pride that was born at once of royalty and freedom, to the courage that would have faced a thousand deaths rather than have bent down to one act of baseness.

"Forgotten!" she echoed, where she bowed herself at his feet. "You are wronged so deeply, that no love but yours could ever outlive such wrong. Listen! I have spoken but truth to you. I have striven to save you with all the might that was in me. I have never been false to you by deed, or word, or thought But—all the same—your life is lost through me; and in me you see the daughter of your vilest foe, of the man who shot you down with a brigand's murder