"But it--even allowing that I have a
secret--need not weigh you down."
"Not weigh me down!--to terror deeper than yours; to shame more abject?
Suppose I know the secret?"
"You cannot know it," he gasped. "It would have killed you."
"And what _has_ it done? Look at me."
"Oh, Maude!" he wailed, "what is it that you do, or do not know? How did
you learn anything about it?"
"I learnt it through my own folly. I am sorry for it now. My knowing it
can make the fact neither better nor worse; and perhaps I might have been
spared the knowledge to the end."
"But what is it that you know?" he asked, rather wishing at the moment he
was dead himself.
"_All._"
"It is impossible."
"It is true."
And he felt that it was true; here was the solution to the conduct which
had puzzled him, puzzled the doctors, puzzled the household and the
countess-dowager.
"And how--and how?" he gasped.
"When that stranger was here last, I heard what he said to you," she
replied, avowing the fact without shame in the moment's terrible anguish.
"I made the third at the interview."
He looked at her in utter disbelief.
"You refused to let me go down. I followed you, and stood at the little
door of the library. It was open, and I--heard--every word."
The last words were spoken with an hysterical sobbing. "Oh, Maude!" broke
from the lips of Lord Hartledon.
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