I was so overwhelmed with grief and love and pity that a groan escaped me almost before I was aware of it. She broke off short, and stared at me in haughtiness.
“You presume to pity me, I think,” she reproved me. “It is my own fault. I was wrong to talk. Women should suffer silently, that they may preserve at least a mask of dignity. Otherwise they incur pity--and pity is very near contempt.”
“Not mine, not mine!” I cried, throwing out my arms; and though that was all I said, there was such a ring in my choking voice that she rose stiffly from her seat and stood tense and tall confronting me, almost eye to eye, reproof in every line of her.
“Princess, forgive me!” I cried. “It breaks my heart in pieces to hear you utter things that have been in my mind these many years, poisoning the devotion that I owed to the late Prince, poisoning the very loyalty I owe my King. You say I pity you. If that were so, none has the better right.”
“Who gave it you?” she asked me, breathless.
“Heaven itself, I think,” I answered recklessly. “What you have suffered, I have suffered for you. When I came to Court the infamy was a thing accomplished--all of it. But I gathered it, and gathering it, thanked Heaven I had been spared the pain and misery of witnessing it, which must have been more than ever I could have endured. Yet when I saw you, when I watched you--your wistful beauty, your incomparable grace--there was a time when the thought to murder stirred darkly in my mind that I might at least avenge you.”
She fell away before me, white to the very lips, her eyes dilating as they regarded me.
“In God's name, why?” she asked me in a strangled voice.
“Because I loved you,” I replied, “always, always, since the day I saw you. Unfortunately, that day was years too late, even had I dared to hope--”
“Antonio!” Something in her voice drew my averted eyes. Her lips had parted, her eyes kindled into life, a flush was stirring in her cheeks.
“And I never knew! I never knew!” she faltered piteously.
“Dear Heaven, why did you withhold a knowledge that would have upheld me and enheartened me through all that I have suffered? Once, long, long ago I hoped--”
We were in each other's arms, she weeping on my shoulder as if her heart would burst, I almost mad with mingling joy and pain--and as God lives there was more matter here for pain than joy.