fusing their office. She sank
down upon the divan and covered her face with her hands.

"God pity me!" she moaned, and sat huddled there, shaken with sobs.

Lionel started at that heart-broken cry. Cowering, he approached her,
and Oliver, grim and sardonic, stood back, a spectator of the scene he
had precipitated. He knew that given rope Lionel would enmesh himself
still further. There must be explanations that would damn him utterly.
Oliver was well content to look on.

"Rosamund!" came Lionel's piteous cry. "Rose! Have mercy! Listen ere you
judge me. Listen lest you misjudge me!"

"Ay, listen to him," Oliver flung in, with his soft hateful laugh.
"Listen to him. I doubt he'll be vastly entertaining."

That sneer was a spur to the wretched Lionel. "Rosamund, all that he has
told you of it is false. I...I...It was done in self-defence. It is
a lie that I took him unawares." His words came wildly now. "We had
quarrelled about... about... a certain matter, and as the devil would
have it we met that evening in Godolphin Park, he and I. He taunted me;
he struck me, and finally he drew upon me and forced me to draw that I
might defend my life. That is the truth. I swear to you here on my knees
in the sight of Heaven! And...."

"Enough, sir! Enough!" she broke in, controlling herself to check these
protests that but heightened her disgust.

"Nay, hear me yet, I implore you; that knowing all you may be merciful
in your judgment."

"Merciful?" she cried, and almost seemed to laugh

"It was an accident that I slew him," Lionel raved on. "I never meant
it. I never meant to do more than ward and preserve my life. But when
swords are crossed more may happen than a man intends. I take God to
witness that his death was an accident resulting from his own fury."

She had checked her sobs, and she considered him now with eyes that were
hard and terrible.

"Was it also an accident that you left me and all the world in the
belief that the deed was your brother's?" she asked him.

He covered his face, as if unable to endure her glance. "Did you but
know how I loved you--even in those days, in secret--you would perhaps
pity me a little," he whimpered.

"Pity?" She leaned forward and seemed to spit the word at him. "'Sdeath,
man! Do you sue for pity--you?"

"Yet you must pity me did you know the greatness of the temptation to
which I succumbed."

"I know the greatness of your infamy, of your falseness, of your
cowardice, o