THE PROOFS OF HER GUILT.
“I beg pardon,” cried Laurie Willoughby, striding forward. With a
resolute grasp, he tore the package from the woman’s hands, though she
shrieked viciously:
“Restore it to me, I command you!”
Like a tigress, she flung herself upon him, struggling for possession
of the package, dreading to see it opened, eager to carry it away.
But a terrible suspicion was forming in his mind.
Firmly, without hurting her, he held her aloof, thrusting the bundle to
his father, saying hoarsely:
“Open it--let us know the worst!”
General Willoughby, dazed and fearful, obeyed.
While Lelia groped in the air aimlessly for what she had lost,
and Laurie held her mother’s hands in a grasp like steel, General
Willoughby shook out the folds of a white robe all stained and spotted
with blood, two letters, and a ring.
“My God, the proofs of her guilt!” the wretched husband cried, in a
voice of anguish.
He released Mrs. Ritchie’s hands, and she sank to the ground like a
stone, crouching there in abject misery.
It was one of the most terrible moments in their three lives--that
moment in which they looked in horror on the proofs of Lelia’s crime.
Her self-accusations they had looked on leniently, believing them
nightmare dreams, as her mother said, the product of an overwrought
mind and alert sympathies.
While they had listened in pain and alarm, no suspicion had crossed
their minds that she was guilty--she, the beautiful, gently nurtured
girl, their pet and pride all her life.
They had shut their eyes to her hideous deformities of temper, her
pride and self-will, her scorn of Gipsy Darke, and her low estate.
Her mother, indeed, had fostered every evil trait, never dreaming
to what a terrible strait uncontrolled passion would yet bring her
idolized daughter.
They had listened in horror and grief to her ravings; they had feared
she was going mad, but in neither mind dawned any suspicion of her
blood guiltiness.
It was left to the moment when she dragged the bundle from its
hiding-place for an awful thought to be born in Laurie Willoughby’s
mind.
That thought made him take the bundle from the frantic mother, firmly
resolved to know its fatal contents.
When the dainty white gown, all crumpled and blood-stained, was
unrolled before his eyes, and the ring and letters fell at his feet, a
strong shudder, as of one dying, shook his whole stalwart frame.
“The proofs of her guilt!” he cried, in an awful voice.
For a conviction of the truth came home to him. He had not a single
doubt but that everything had happened as Lelia had told it in her
strange, somnambulistic state.
She had murdered Gipsy, as she believed, and latent remorse had wrought
upon her nerves, goading her into unconscious self-betrayal.
With blended pity and horror, he looked upon the beautiful, wild-eyed
creature, groping in the air for what she had lost, muttering that
Laurie must never find it--no, no, no, or he would be so angry he would
never love her again.
With a shudder he released Mrs. Ritchie, who sank heavily into a chair,
her whole frame shaking with tearless sobs of terrible despair.
He picked up the beautiful ring that was all crusted and dark with
blood, as Lelia had said. Oh, what a terrible price had poor Gipsy paid
for her few hours of happiness in its possession!
“These two letters,” he said, “I wrote to my aunt and to Gipsy Darke,
and Lelia must have intercepted them. They were written on a private
matter, that can interest no one now.”
He placed them in his breast-pocket, and drew out a shining gold button.
“I searched poor Gipsy’s room for a clue to her murderer, and I found
this button on the floor in a wisp of dark hair,” he said. Then
touching the sleeves of the white gown, “I see one button missing
here, and this is the mate to it. Every link in the evidence is made
clear now. We cannot doubt Lelia’s self-confessed sin.”
“Oh, my God, Laurie, what are you going to do to my poor child? She did
not mean to do it--it was all an accident; you heard her say so! And,
after all, that wretched girl is alive and well, and has triumphed over
us in every way!” sobbed the wretched mother.
He looked at her a moment without speaking, his mind busy with the
problem she had presented.
In great emergencies the mind moves very rapidly. His course was
quickly decided.
“I think my father’s idea of sending Lelia to a hospital for nerve
treatment an excellent one,” he said. “If she objects, she must be made
to understand that it is the most prudent course. As for her guilty
secret, since Miss Whitney chooses to keep it, let us three be as
generous. For the rest, I leave The Crags to-morrow, and America soon
afterward, for an indefinite sojourn abroad. I shall appoint my father
in my place as Miss Whitney’s guardian.”
“And Lelia?” the mother cried eagerly. “Will you not in time forgive
her, and take her home to your heart?”
“Never!”
“That is cruel, Laurie.”
“No, it is only just. She will never be wife of mine, save in name
only.”
Lelia had sunk down upon the floor, with her arms clasped around her
knees. A dull calm had succeeded her wild ravings.
“She will come to herself soon--she grows calmer. Indeed, this is the
worst spell she ever had. I did not dream of those telltale proofs, or
I would have destroyed them,” the poor mother cried, defiantly adding:
“You may leave me alone with her now, to tell her when she is rational
the cruel truth that will break her heart and drive her mad in reality.”
Laurie and his father bowed silently and withdrew, leaving her alone
with Lelia amid the desolate ruins of their towering hopes and dreams.
It seemed as if The Crags was never to have done with sensations.
The next day it was whispered about that the young bride, Mrs.
Willoughby, had suffered a nervous collapse from the troubles at
The Crags, and was to be placed at once in a Northern sanatorium for
treatment.
She remained closely in her room all the next day, attended only by
her mother. What went on behind that closed door none knew but Mrs.
Ritchie, but by the dawn of the morrow the gray hairs she was dreading
shone silvery white in her fair hair. Lelia had not taken her defeat
very well.
And the bridegroom was gone without any farewells to his unloved bride.