He bent to raise her; but, with a sort of scream she held out her arms to keep him back.
"No, no, no! Touch me not! Hate me--kill me! I have murdered your friend!"
Sir Norman recoiled as if from a deadly serpent.
"Murdered him! Madame, in Heaven"s name, what have you said?"
"Oh, I have not stabbed him, or poisoned him, or shot him; but I am his murderer, nevertheless!" she wailed, writhing in a sort of gnawing inward torture.
"Madame, I do not understand you at all! Surely you are raving when you talk like this."
Still moaning on the edge of the plague-pit, she half rose up, with both hands clasped tightly over her heart, as if she would have held back from all human ken the anguish that was destroying her,
"NO--no! I am not mad--pray Heaven I were! Oh, that they had strangled me in the first hour of my birth, as they would a viper, rather than I should have lived through all this life of misery and guilt, to end it by this last, worst crime of all!"
Sir Norman stood and looked at her still with a dazed expression. He knew well enough whose murderer she called herself; but why she did so, or how she could possibly bring about his death, was a mystery altogether too deep for him to solve.
"Madame, compose yourself, I beseech you, and tell me what you mean. It is to my friend, Ormiston, you allude--is it not?"
"Yes--yes! surely you need not ask."
"I know that he is dead, and buried in this horrible place; but why you should accuse yourself of murdering him, I confess I do not know."
"Then you shall!" she cried, pa.s.sionately. "And you will wonder at it no longer! You are the last one to whom the revelation can ever be made on earth; and, now that my hours are numbered, it matters little whether it is told or not! Was it not you who first found him dead?"
"It was I--yes. And how he came to his end, I have been puzzling myself in vain to discover ever since."
She rose up, drew herself to her full majestic height, and looked at him with a terrible glance,
"Shall I tell you?"
"You have had no hand in it," he answered, with a cold chill at the tone and look, "for he loved you!"
"I have had a hand in it--I alone have been the cause of it. But for me he would be living still!"
"Madame," exclaimed Sir Norman, in horror.
"You need not look as if you thought me mad, for I tell you it is Heaven"s truth! You say right--he loved me; but for that love he would be living now!"
"You speak in riddles which I cannot read. How could that love have caused his death, since his dearest wishes were to be granted to-night?"
"He told you that, did he?"
"He did. He told me you were to remove your mask; and if, on seeing you, he still loved you, you were to be his wife."
"Then woe to him for ever having extorted such a promise from me! Oh, I warned him again, and again, and again. I told him how it would be--I begged him to desist; but no, he was blind, he was mad; he would rush on his own doom! I fulfilled my promise, and behold the result!"
She pointed with a frantic gesture to the plague-pit, and wrung her beautiful hands with the same moaning of anguish.
"Do I hear aright?" said Sir Norman, looking at her, and really doubting if his ears had not deceived him. "Do you mean to say that, in keeping your word and showing him your face, you have caused his death?"
"I do. I had warned him of it before. I told him there were sights too horrible to look on and live, but nothing would convince him! Oh, why was the curse of life ever bestowed upon such a hideous thing as I!"
Sir Norman gazed at her in a state of hopeless bewilderment. He had thought, from the moment he saw her first, that there was something wrong with her brain, to make her act in such a mysterious, eccentric sort of way; but he had never positively thought her so far gone as this. In his own mind, he set her down, now, as being mad as a March hare, and accordingly answered in that soothing tone people use to imbeciles,
"My dear Madame Masque, pray do not excite yourself, or say such dreadful things. I am sure you would not willfully cause the death of any one, much less that of one who loved you as he did."
La Masque broke into a wild laugh, almost worse to hear than her former despairing moans.
"The man thinks me mad! He will not believe, unless he sees and knows for himself! Perhaps you, too, Sir Norman Kingsley," she cried, changing into sudden fierceness, "would like to see the face behind this mask?--would like to see what has slain your friend, and share his fate?"
"Certainly," said Sir Norman. "I should like to see it; and I think I may safely promise not to die from the effects. But surely, madame, you deceive yourself; no face, however ugly--even supposing you to possess such a one--could produce such dismay as to cause death."
"You shall see."
She was looking down into the plague-pit, standing so close to its cracking edge, that Sir Norman"s blood ran cold, in the momentary expectation to see her slip and fall headlong in. Her voice was less fierce and less wild, but her hands were still clasped tightly over her heart, as if to ease the unutterable pain there. Suddenly, she looked up, and said, in an altered tone:
"You have lost Leoline?"
"And found her again. She is in the power of one Count L"Estrange."
"And if in his power, pray, how have you found her?"
"Because we are both to meet in her presence within this very hour, and she is to decide between us."
"Has Count L"Estrange promised you this?"
"He has."
"And you have no doubt what her decision will be?"
"Not the slightest."
"How came you to know she was carried off by this count?"
"He confessed it himself."
"Voluntarily?"
"No; I taxed him with it, and he owned to the deed; but he voluntarily promised to take me to her and abide by her decision."
"Extraordinary!" said La Masque, as if to herself. "Whimsical as he is, I scarcely expected he would give her up so easily as this."
"Then you know him, madame?" said Sir Norman, pointedly.
"There are few things I do not know, and rare are the disguises I cannot penetrate. So you have discovered it, too?"
"No, madame, my eyes were not sharp enough, nor had I sufficient cleverness, even, for that. It was Hubert, the Earl of Rochester"s page, who told me who he was."