"Settle with yourself for that sin," she said bitterly. "Your remorse
will not save him. But do the thing that I bid you, if that remorse be
sincere. Write me out here that title you say he should bear, and your
statement that he is your brother, and should be the chief of your
house; then sign it, and give it to me."
He seized her hands, and gazed with imploring eyes into her face.
"Who are you? What are you? If you have the power to do it, for the love
of God rescue him! It is I who have murdered him--I--who have let him
live on in this hell for my sake!"
"For your sake!"
She flung his hands off her and looked him full in the face; that glance
of the speechless scorn, the unutterable rebuke of the woman-child who
would herself have died a thousand deaths rather than have purchased a
whole existence by a single falsehood or a single cowardice, smote
him like a blow, and avenged his sin more absolutely than any public
chastisement. The courage and the truth of a girl scorned his timorous
fear and his living lie. His head sank, he seemed to shrink under her
gaze; his act had never looked so vile to him as it looked now.
She gazed a moment longer at him with her mute and wondering disdain
that there should be on earth a male life capable of such fear and of
such ignominy as this. Then the strong and rapid power in her took its
instant ascendancy over the weaker nature.
"Monsieur, I do not know your story, I do not want.
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