“I know, I know,” said Lydgate, deprecatingly. “It was a fatal accident⁠—a dreadful stroke of calamity that bound me to you the more.”

Again Laure paused a little and then said, slowly, “ I meant to do it. ”

Lydgate, strong man as he was, turned pale and trembled: moments seemed to pass before he rose and stood at a distance from her.

“There was a secret, then,” he said at last, even vehemently. “He was brutal to you: you hated him.”

“No! he wearied me; he was too fond: he would live in Paris, and not in my country; that was not agreeable to me.”

“Great God!” said Lydgate, in a groan of horror. “And you planned to murder him?”