It was a strange sight on which the flickering gaslight fell in that
little room. The dying man, lying on the litter on which he had been
borne into the room, and from which the physician declared it impossible
to remove him, was a ghastly sight that sickened human sensibilities.
Mrs. Stuart, crouching on the floor beside him in her rose-tinted satin,
her priceless lace and flashing diamonds, looked like a maniac. Her eyes
flashed with hatred and desperation, her face was death-white, her
breath fluttered over her lips in short gasps, and she defiantly
resisted the efforts of Mr. Stuart and the physician to draw her away
from the side of the dying man whose looks all too plainly expressed his
abhorrence at her presence. At a little distance the old priest was
devoutly crossing himself while he muttered an inaudible prayer. No
wonder that Elaine Brooke reeled with horror as her gaze fell on that
strange and dreadful scene.
"Be brave. Do not lose heart," Guy Kenmore whispered to her as he felt
her weight grow heavier on his arm. "That dying man may have an
important confession to make to you."
"I _will_ be brave," she whispered back, but when she saw Clarence
Stuart and the woman who had rivalled her in his heart--the woman who
was his wife--it seemed to her that she could not breathe, that she must
rush from the room, or surely she would fall down dead there at her
traitor husband's feet.
They turned and saw them, the tall, gracious-looking man with his
gentle, protecting air as he looked down upon Elaine--Elaine all in
white, with her golden hair fallen down upon her shoulders in shining
disorder, the snowy roses dying on her breast, and the pathos of a
terrible despair written all over her lovely, pallid face--they saw her,
and from Mrs. Stuart's lips shrilled a cry of rage and despair, from
those of the dying man an exclamation of joy.
"You live!" he cried, "thank God, you live! Your death is not upon these
dying hands!"
"Then it was you who fired that terrible shot!" cried Elaine, in horror.
"God forgive me, yes," he wailed. "Come nearer, Elaine Brooke. I have a
story to tell you before I go hence. I have a legacy to leave you. Oh,
horrors, will not some one take this mad woman away from me?"
Mrs. Stuart had sprung upon him in such insane fury that it seemed as
though she meant to hurry his remorseful soul into the eternity to which
it was hastening. Mr. Stuart hastened to draw her away, dreading the
struggle that must ensue, when suddenly, with a choking gasp, she fell
senseless into his arms. The tension on her nerves had given way, and
she had instantly fainted.
"That is much better than having to remove the lady by violence," said
the physician, relieved. "We will remove her to another room now where
she cannot distress my patient."
"Clarence, you must return in a moment," moaned Julius Revington. "I
have a confession to make to this lady--one that you must hear."
Mr. Stuart looked back a moment, and his glance met Elaine's large blue
eyes, true as those of an angel, yet full of dumb agony. His glance fell
and he turned away, with a strange thrill at his heart.
"She repents of her cruelty to me," he said in his heart. Meanwhile Guy
Kenmore had spread a dark covering over Revington's mangled form, and
Elaine knelt down beside him on a low cushion which Mr. Kenmore had
arranged for her. She looked with compassionate gentleness at the
sufferer who was passing away so fast from the reach of all earthly
resentment.
"You are a stranger to me," she said, wonderingly. "Why did you try to
harm me, and what can you have to confess to me?"
"You shall know presently," he answered. "Wait until Clarence Stuart
comes back. You must hear my story together--you two who have been so
foully wronged and parted."