"'Can I see him,' I asked, 'without his seeing me?'

"'Yes,' said she, 'if you come very carefully; his head is towards the door.'

"I did as she bade, and crept towards the open door. As I reached it he was speaking low to himself.

"'Drop by drop,' he was saying, 'just as if it were my life-blood that was dripping from the table to the floor.'

"It was a terrible thing to hear, for _me_ to hear, and I shrank back.

But soon a certain sense of duty drove me forward again, and I leaned across the threshold, peering at his rigid and attenuated figure lying just where he could watch the destruction of all his hopes. I could not see his face, but his att.i.tude was eloquent, and I felt a pang strike through all my horror at the sight of a grief the death of both his children could not have occasioned him.

"Suddenly he bounded up.

"'Curse her!' he began, in a frenzy; but instantly seemed to bethink himself, for he sank back very meekly as Emma stooped over him and Doris rushed to his side. 'Excuse me,' said he; 'I fear I am not just in my right mind.'

"They thought so too, and in a few minutes Doris stole out after the doctor, but I knew whatever delirium he had sprang from his hate of me, and was awed into a shrinking inactivity which Emma excused while only partially understanding.

"The doctor came and this time I stood watching. My father, who had not expected this interference, showed anger at first, but soon settled back into a half-jocular, half-indifferent endurance of the interloper, which tended to impress the latter, and did succeed in doing so, with the folly of those who thought he was sick enough to rouse a doctor up at midnight. Few questions brought few replies, and the irritated physician left us with something like a rebuke. He however said he would come again in the morning, as there was a fitfulness in my father's pulse which he did not like.

"But before the doctor appeared that morning father had called me for the third and last time to his side.

"'I wish to see my eldest daughter alone,' he declared, as Emma lingered and Doris hovered about the open door. They at once went out. 'Now shut the door,' said he, as their footsteps were heard descending the stairs.

"I did as I was bid, though I felt as if I were shutting myself in with some horrid doom.

"'Now come in front of me,' he commanded, 'I want to look at you. I have just five minutes left in which to do it.'

"'Five minutes!' I repeated hoa.r.s.ely, creeping round with tottering and yet more tottering steps to where he pointed.

"'Yes; the poison has done its work at last. At eight o'clock I shall be dead.'

"'Poison!' I shrieked, but in so choked a tone the word sounded like a smothered whisper.

"But he was alarmed by it for all that.

"'Do not tell the world,' he cried. 'It is enough that you know it. Are you pleased that you have driven your father to self-destruction? Will it make your life in this house, in which you have vowed to remain, any happier? I told you that your sin should be on your head; and it will be. For, listen to me: now in this last dreadful hour, I command you, heartless and disobedient one, to keep that vow. By this awful death, by the despair which has driven me to it, beware of leaving these doors. In your anger you swore to remain within these walls; in your remorse see that you keep that oath. Not for love, not for hatred, dare to cross the threshold, or I will denounce you in the grave where I shall be gone, and my curse shall be upon you.'

"He had risen in his pa.s.sion as he uttered these words, but he sank back as he finished, and I thought he was dead. Terrified, crushed, I sank upon my knees, having no words with which to plead for the mercy for which I now longed. The next minute a horrible groan burst upon my ear.

"'It eats--it burns into my vitals. The suffering has come,--the suffering which I have often noted with unconcern in the animals upon which I tested it. I cannot bear it; I had rather live. Get me the antidote; there, there, in the long narrow drawer in the cabinet by the wall. Not there, not there!' he shrieked, as I stumbled over the floor, which seemed to rise in waves beneath my feet. 'The other cabinet, the other drawer; _you are where the poison is_.'

"I halted; weights seemed to be upon my feet; I could not move. He was writhing in agony on the floor; he no longer seemed to know where I stood.

"'Open it--the drawer,' he cried. 'Bring me what is in it.'

"I reached out my hand; heaven and earth seemed to stand still; red lights danced before my eyes; I drew out the drawer.

"'Quick, quick, the powder!' he moaned; 'fetch it!'

"I was staring at him, but my hand groped in the drawer. I felt a little packet of powder; I took it and crossed the room. As soon as I was near him he stretched out his hand and grasped it. I saw him empty it into his mouth; at the same instant his eyes fixed themselves in horror on the drawer I had left open behind me, the drawer in which the poison was kept.

"'Curse you for a----' He never said what. With this broken imprecation upon his lips, he sank back upon the floor, dead."

XXV.

EDGAR AND FRANK.

Frank, who had been reading these words as if swept along by a torrent, started to his feet with a hoa.r.s.e cry, as he reached this point. He could not believe his eyes, he could not believe his understanding. He shrank from the paper that contained the deadly revelation, as though a snake had suddenly uncoiled itself from amid the sheets. With hair slowly rising on his forehead, he stared and stared, hoping wildly, hoping against hope, to see other words start from the sheet, and blot out of existence the ones that had in an instant made his love a horror, his life a desert.

But no, Heaven works no such miracle, even in sight of such an agony as his; and the words met his gaze relentlessly till his misery was more than he could endure, and he rushed from the room like a madman.

Edgar, who was busy over some medical treatise, rose rapidly as he heard the unsteady footsteps of his friend.

"What is the matter?" he cried, as Frank came stumbling into his presence. "You look----"

"Never mind how I look; comfort me, Edgar, comfort me!" and in his anguish he burst into irrepressible sobs "Hermione is----" He could not say what, but drew his friend after him to the room where the letter lay, and pointed to the few ghastly lines which had undone him. "Read those," he panted. "She had suffered; she was not herself, but, oh----"

He broke down again, and did not try to speak further till Edgar had read the hideous confession contained in those closing lines, and some of the revelations which had led up to it. Then he said: "Do not speak to me yet; let me bear the horror alone. I loved her so; ah, I did love her!"

Edgar, who had turned very pale, was considerate enough to respect this grief, and silently wait for Frank to regain sufficient composure to talk with him. This was not soon, but when the moment came, Edgar showed that his heart beat truly under all his apparent indifference. He did not say, "I bade you beware"; he merely took his friend's hand and wrung it. Frank, who was almost overwhelmed with shame and sorrow, muttered some words of acknowledgment.

"I must get out of the town," said he. "I feel as if the very atmosphere here would choke me."

Here came again the long, doleful drone of the foghorn. "How like a groan that is," said he. "An evil day it was for me when I first came within its foreboding sound."

"We will say that when all is over," ventured Edgar, but in no very hopeful tones. "You should not have shown me these words, Frank; the wonder is that she was willing to show them to you."

"She could not otherwise get rid of my importunities. I would take no hint, and so she tells me the truth."

"That shows n.o.bleness," remarked Edgar. "She has some virtues which may excuse you to yourself for the weakness you have shown in her regard."

"I dare not think of it," said Frank. "I dare not think of her again.

Yet to leave her when she is suffering so! Is not that almost as cruel a fate as to learn that she is so unworthy?"

"I would you had never come here!" exclaimed Edgar, with unwonted fervency.

"There are more words," observed Frank, "but I cannot read them. "Words of sorrow and remorse, no doubt, but what do they avail? The fact remains that she gave her father in his agony another dose of the poison that was killing him, instead of the antidote for which he prayed."

"Yes," said Edgar, "only I feel bound to say that no antidote would have saved him then. I know the poison and I know the antidote; we have tested them together often."

Frank shuddered.

"He had the heart of a demon," declared Edgar, "to plan and carry out such a revenge, even upon a daughter who had so grievously disappointed him. I can hardly believe the tale, only that I have learned that one may believe anything of human nature."

"She--she did not kill him, then?"

"No, but her guilt is as great as if she had, for she must have had the momentary instinct of murder."