Some time afterwards had occurred that terrible event to which Miriam
had alluded when she revealed her name; an event, the frightful and
mysterious circumstances of which will recur to many minds, but of which
few or none can have found for themselves a satisfactory explanation. It
only concerns the present narrative, inasmuch as the suspicion of being
at least an accomplice in the crime fell darkly and directly upon Miriam
herself.
"But you know that I am innocent!" she cried, interrupting herself
again, and looking Kenyon in the face.
"I know it by my deepest consciousness," he answered; "and I know it by
Hilda's trust and entire affection, which you never could have won had
you been capable of guilt."
"That is sure ground, indeed, for pronouncing me innocent," said Miriam,
with the tears gushing into her eyes. "Yet I have since become a horror
to your saint-like Hilda, by a crime which she herself saw me help to
perpetrate!"
She proceeded with her story. The great influence of her family
connections had shielded her from some of the consequences of her
imputed guilt. But, in her despair, she had fled from home, and had
surrounded her flight with such circumstances as rendered it the most
probable conclusion that she had committed suicide. Miriam, however, was
not of the feeble nature which takes advantage of that obvious and poor
resource in earthly difficulties. She flung herself upon the world,
and speedily created a new sphere, in which Hilda's gentle purity,
the sculptor's sensibility, clear thought, and genius, and Donatello's
genial simplicity had given her almost her first experience of
happiness. Then came that ill-omened adventure of the catacomb, The
spectral figure which she encountered there was the evil fate that had
haunted her through life.
Looking back upon what had happened, Miriam observed, she now considered
him a madman. Insanity must have been mixed up with his original
composition, and developed by those very acts of depravity which it
suggested, and still more intensified, by the remorse that ultimately
followed them. Nothing was stranger in his dark career than the
penitence which often seemed to go hand in hand with crime. Since his
death she had ascertained that it finally led him to a convent,
where his severe and self-inflicted penance had even acquired him the
reputation of unusual sanctity, and had been the cause of his enjoying
greater freedom than is commonly allowed to monks.
"Need I tell you more?" asked Miriam, after proceeding thus far. "It
is still a dim and dreary mystery, a gloomy twilight into which I guide
you; but possibly you may catch a glimpse of much that I myself can
explain only by conjecture. At all events, you can comprehend what my
situation must have been, after that fatal interview in the catacomb.
My persecutor had gone thither for penance, but followed me forth with
fresh impulses to crime. He had me in his power. Mad as he was, and
wicked as he was, with one word he could have blasted me in the belief
of all the world. In your belief too, and Hilda's! Even Donatello would
have shrunk from me with horror!"