charged me with the guilt which he himself had contrived for me."

"Lady Ongar!"

"Yes; you may well stare at me. You may well speak hoarsely and look
like that. It may be that even you will not believe me; but by the God
in whom we both believe, I tell you nothing but the truth. He attempted
that and he failed; and then he accused me of the crime which he could
not bring me to commit."

"And what then?"

"Yes; what then? Harry, I had a thing to do, and a life to live, that
would have tried the bravest; but I went through it. I stuck to him to
the last! He told me before he was dying--before that last frightful
illness, that I was staying with him for his money. 'For your money, my
lord,' I said, 'and for my own name.' And so it was. Would it have been
wise in me, after all that I had gone through, to have given up that for
which I had sold myself? I had been very poor, and had been so placed
that poverty, even, such poverty as mine, was a curse to me. You know
what I gave up because I feared that curse. Was I to be foiled at last,
because such a creature as that wanted to shirk out of his bargain? I
knew there would be some who would say I had been false. Hugh Clavering
says so now, I suppose. But they never should say I had left him to die
alone in a foreign land."

"Did he ask you to leave him?"

"No; but he called me that name which no woman should hear and stay. No
woman should do so unless she had a purpose such as mine. He wanted back