Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 3.djvu/347

336 knelt there, where the faint and gold-hued light of the dying lamp strayed softly to her, and fell upon her head like a halo of martyrdom in the pictures of old masters. He stooped to her.

"Tell me all."

"All my shame!"

"Not yours; you had no share in it, or you would not kneel there to-night." "Yes, mine; for the shame of one man is the shame of his race, and the evil that is shielded is shared."

She felt him shudder for one moment from her.

"Stay! You were never leagued with that infamy?" "Against your life ? No. I suspected—I feared—but they dreaded me, and hid it from me. Once I brought it against him, and he swore by the memory of my mother that he was innocent. This one oath he had used to hold sacred. By it he duped me—that once."

A hate, unforgiving and deadly, ran through the thrill of the words. In the sight of her fearless eyes the one unpardonable guilt was the dastardly guilt of a lie.

"Tell you all?" she pursued, while her voice rose swifter, and gathered the fluent eloquence which