The Midnight Queen - Page 157/177

The cowering form rose up; but, seeing who it was, sank down again, with

its face groveling in the dust, and with another prolonged, moaning cry.

"Madame Masque!" he said, wonderingly; "what is this?"

He bent to raise her; but, with a sort of scream she held out her arms

to keep him back.

"No, no, no I Touch me not! Hate me--kill me! I have murdered your

friend!"

Sir Norman recoiled as if from a deadly tent.

"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, passionately. "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.