"Why do you not answer me?" she pursued, while she leaned nearer with
wonder, and doubt, and a certain awakening dread shadowing the blue
luster of her eyes that were bent so thoughtfully, so searchingly, upon
him. "Is it possible that you have heard of your inheritance, of your
title and estates, and that you voluntarily remain a soldier here? Lord
Royallieu must yield them in the instant you prove your identity, and in
that there could be no difficulty. I remember you well now, and Philip,
I am certain, will only need to see you once to--"
"Hush, for pity's sake! Have you never heard--have none ever told
you----"
"What?"
Her face grew paler with a vague sense of fear; she knew that he had
been equable and resolute under the severest tests that could try the
strength and the patience of man, and she knew, therefore, that no
slender thing could agitate and could unman him thus.
"What is it I should have heard?" she asked him, as he kept his silence.
He turned from her so that she could not see his face.
"That, when I became dead to the world, I died with the taint of crime
on me!"
"Of crime?"
An intense horror thrilled through the echo of the word; but she rose,
and moved, and faced him with the fearless resolve of a woman whom no
half-truth would blind, and no shadowy terror appall.
"Of crime? What crime?"
Then, and then only, he looked at her, a strange, fixed, hopeless, yet
serene look, that she knew no criminal ever would or could have given.
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