FOR THE LAST TIME.
My eyes turned immediately in the direction of the secret chamber. Its
entrance was closed, but I knew she was hidden there as well as if the
door had been open and I had seen her.
What should I do? For a moment I hesitated, then I rushed from the room
and hastened back to Mr. Felt. I found him standing with his face to the
door, eagerly awaiting my return.
"What has happened?" he asked, importunately. "Your face is as pale as
death."
"Because death is in the house. Madame--"
"Ah!"
"Lies not in her bed, nor is she to be found in her room. There is
another place, however, in which instinct tells me we shall find her,
and if we do, we shall find her dead!"
"In her daughter's room? At her daughter's bedside?"
"No; in the secret chamber."
He gazed at me with wild and haggard aspect.
"You are right," he hoarsely assented. "Let us go; let us seek her; it
may not be too late."
The entrance to this hidden room was closed, as I have said, and as I
had never assisted at its opening, I did not know where to find the
hidden spring by means of which the panel was moved. We had, therefore,
to endure minutes of suspense while Mr. Felt fumbled at the wainscoting.
The candle I held shook with my agitation, and though I had heard
nothing of the storm before, it seemed now as if every gust which came
swooping down upon the house tore its way through my shrinking
consciousness with a force and menace that scattered the last remnant of
self-possession. Not an instant in the whole terrible day had been more
frightful to me, no, not the moment when I first heard the sliding of
this very panel and the sound of her crawling form approaching me
through the darkness. The vivid flashes of lightning that shot every now
and then through the cracks of the closely shuttered window, making a
skeleton of its framework, added not a little to its terror, there being
no other light in the room save that and the flickering, almost dying
flame, with which I strove to aid Mr. Felt's endeavors and only
succeeded in lighting up his anxious and heavily bedewed forehead.
"Oh, oh!" was my moan; "this is terrible! Let us quit it or go around to
my own room, where there is an open door."
But he did not hear me. His efforts had become frantic, and he tore at
the wainscoting as if he would force it open by main strength.
"You cannot reach her that way," I declared. "Perhaps my hand may be
more skillful. Let me try."
But he only increased his efforts. "I am coming, Marah; I am coming!" he
called, and at once, as if guided by some angel's touch, his fingers
slipped upon the spring. Immediately it yielded, and the opening so
eagerly sought for was made.
"Go in," he gasped, "go in."
And so it was that the fate which had forced me against my will, and in
despite of such intense shrinking, to pass so frequently into that
hideous spot, where death held its revel and Nemesis awaited her victim,
drove me thither once again, and, as I now hope, for the last time. For,
there upon the floor, and almost in the same spot where we had found
lying the remains of innocent Honora Urquhart, we saw, as my
premonition had told me we should, the outstretched form of the unhappy
being who had usurped her place in life, and now, in retribution of that
act, had laid her head down upon the same couch in death. She was
pulseless and quite cold. Upon her mouth her left hand lay pressed, as
if, with her last breath, she sought to absorb the pure kiss which had
been left there by the daughter she so much loved.