And as she stood a shiver shook her frame; in the solitude of her lighted and luxurious chamber her cheek grew pale, her eyes grew dim.
"To refute the charge," ran the last words of what was at best but a fragment, "I must have broken my promise to you, and have compromised your name.

Keeping silence myself, but letting the trial take place, law-inquiries so execrable and so minute, would soon have traced through others that I was with you that evening.

To clear myself I must have attainted your name with public slander, and drawn the horrible ordeal on you before the world.

Let me be thought guilty.

It matters little.
Henceforth I shall be dead to all who know me, and my ruin would have exiled me without this.