Mrs. Robson hastens forward, with a cry of dismay, to lift her mistress
from the pillows, fearing to find her dead. But Lady Vera has not even
fainted. Her white, quivering, anguished face turns upon her enemy
with scorn and defiance, struggling bravely with pitiful weakness and
despair.
"You have almost come too late," she cries, resting against Mrs.
Robson's broad shoulder, and looking at him with a strange triumph in
her hollow, gleaming eyes. "Death has nearly been here before you. You
have but come now to see him wrest your prey from your merciless grasp.
You will have nothing but my poor, wasted body to gloat over. The soul
that you have tortured out of its earthly tenement will soon be past
your power."
He stares at her, growing ghastly pale and alarmed. Mrs. Robson has
told him that his wife is ill, that she is fretting herself to death,
but he is scarcely prepared for this. It looks like death, indeed,
that marble pallor, those wide and brilliant eyes that gleam upon him
so weirdly, triumphing over him, even in death. A horrible sense of
loss and disappointment thrills through him. Is she dying, indeed, his
beautiful Vera, his rich and honored countess, the glories of whose
state he has meant to share?
"Vera, my darling, you must not die," he exclaims, going forward and
holding out his arms to her entreatingly. "Live for me, my dearest
wife. I love you more than life! Give yourself to me, Vera; let me win
your heart, and I swear I will make you happy."
She waves him away with a gesture of supreme loathing. In their anger
and excitement no one is aware that the door has creaked softly on its
hinges, that it is pushed slightly ajar now, and that two faces, lurid
with jealous rage and deadly anger, are peering cautiously around it.
"I love you, Vera," he repeats, undaunted by her proud scorn, sure that
he must win at last. "I love you, Vera, and I have never loved but you.
Thinking you dead, I was lured into that marriage with Ivy Cleveland.
She turned out to be a termagant, who only cared for my money, and
I hated her long before that blissful night when you, so grand and
beautiful that I already adored you, not knowing who you were, boldly
claimed me as your husband. You must forgive that ill-starred marriage
with your cousin, my precious Vera. She and her base mother made me
repent it every hour of my life. I suffered enough through them, Vera,
so you ought to be kind to me."
Strange that they do not hear the sibilant whisper of threatening
hate that hisses through the room! But they are absorbed in their own
passions, and the storm now raging at the hight of its fury has many
strange sounds of its own as it surges around the ivy-mantled room.
Now and then a sheet of vivid lightning illuminates the curtained
windows, and a peal of terrible thunder shakes the old mansion from
garret to cellar. But only Mrs. Robson has any ear or any thought for
the fury of the storm.
"Kind to you," Lady Vera repeats, in her faint, but cutting voice,
gazing at her cringing suppliant. "Were you kind to me in my sore
distress and misery when my mother lay dead in her grave, and I had
no one to turn to but you in my bitter desolation and despair? Were
you kind and loving to your friendless bride then, in her poverty
and woe? No! and it is not Vera Campbell you seek to win now. It is
Lady Fairvale, of Fairvale, countess in her own right, with thirty
thousand pounds a year. You see, I understand the value of your vapid
protestations of love and repentance."
"You mistake me, Lady Vera, in attributing mercenary motives to me,"
he answers, with pretended sadness and grief. "I love you for yourself
alone. I am very rich still, although not so wealthy as you are. I am
not yet too poor to woo you as a royal lover. See, my darling, I bring
you jewels fine enough for a queen--jewels that even your grandeur
need not disdain; diamonds bright as your eyes, pearls as fair as your
milk-white skin."
He has drawn two jewel caskets from his breast, and unlocks them before
her wondering eyes. The diamonds flash in the light, seeming to fill
the gloomy room with sunshine, the large, pale pearls shine with the
lustrous whiteness of the moon's chill rays.
His eyes shine as he looks into her face to note the effect. Surely
such an offering as this must win her back even from the portals of
death to be his own. These must win her love for him, surely. No fair
woman ever turned her back on the donor of such sparkling, flashing,
burning diamonds, such moon-white, gleaming pearls.
But as he gazes triumphantly into her eyes, her lips curl, she recoils
in scorn and aversion.
"I spurn both you and your offerings," she answers, quickly. "They
are poor Ivy Cleveland's diamonds and pearls. Oh, how could you be so
mean and vile as to rob that poor girl of her jewels now, when already
bereft of the jewel of honor?"
"They are not Ivy's jewels," he answers. "I bought them for you to-day
in London. Do you think I would offer you aught that had belonged to
that woman who had wronged you?"
"Liar! Coward! Robber!" cries a voice of raging hate and jealousy, and
like a sudden vision, Ivy Cleveland appears among them, her golden
tresses flying in disorder, her face livid with passion, her blue eyes
blazing with wrath, in her clenched, white hand, a tiny, gleaming
pistol, like a pretty toy.
"Liar! Coward! Robber! I will have your life for my wrongs," she
shrieks, and the gleaming pistol covers his heart, there is a terrible
report, a flash of thick smoke, and with a cry of horror, Leslie Noble
leaps into the air and falls backward--dead!
"He is dead, but I have my jewels again!" the murderess cries, with
maniacal triumph, gathering the fallen jewels to her breast and
exulting wildly over them.
At the loud report of the pistol, and Ivy's frenzied cry, Mrs.
Cleveland rushes into the room and kneels by the side of the prostrate
man, whose life-blood has gushed out in a crimson tide upon the faded
carpet. She puts her hand over his heart and bends her ear to his lips.
But in a moment she lifts her head and regards her daughter with a
blank stare of terror.
"Oh, Ivy, Ivy, you have killed your husband!" she exclaims, in a
frightened voice.
But Ivy, sitting on the floor like a child, running a diamond necklace
lovingly through her fingers, like a stream of light, only glances up
carelessly at the dead body on the floor, whose life-blood has crept
slowly along the carpet, until it has crimsoned the hem of her dress.
She laughs aloud, a chill, blood-curdling laugh.
"He deserved death," she answers, in a strange, unnatural voice. "He
stole my pretty jewels from me--my diamonds and my pearls, ha, ha! I
am the Queen of England, did you not know that? I beheaded my false
subject because he stole the crown jewels. There is a ball to-night.
I am engaged to dance with the President of the United States. He is
coming for that purpose. Ha, ha! will it not be a fine sight?" and
springing to her feet she began to dance wildly around the room, her
precious jewels clasped in her arms like a babe to her mother's breast,
while she sang in terrible, maniacal glee:
"The king is dead, long live the king!"
Again there crept to the door two watchers who peered in all unheeded
by those within the room, who watched with straining, horrified gaze
the wild gyrations of the maddened Ivy, whose small figure continued to
spin aimlessly around the floor to the accompaniment of gay, lilting
tunes sung in a high-pitched, tuneless voice, that was terrible to hear.
"The poor lady is raving crazy!" at last exclaimed Mrs. Robson, finding
voice for the first time since she had ushered Mr. Noble into the room.
The sudden and unexpected appearance of two strange women on the scene,
and the murder of her master had struck her dumb with terror, but all
the while she had continued to uphold the exhausted frame of Lady Vera
in her strong, protecting arms.
"Yes, she is mad," Lady Vera answers, in a low, sad, pitying tone.
"Who says that I am mad?" demands Ivy, sinking down upon the floor,
wearied by her wild performance. "I deny it! I am the Shah of Persia's
bride, and these jewels are my dowry from my royal bridegroom!"
Mrs. Cleveland, turning her eyes for the first time from the face
of her stricken daughter, rests them upon Countess Vera's wasted,
death-white features.
"See what your cursed arts have done," she cried out, harshly. "It
is all your work! I am glad that you are dying, Vera Campbell! I
have hated you from the hour of your birth! You were born to be my
stumbling-block, and to work out my destruction!"
"I was born to be the avenger of my parents' wrongs," Lady Vera
answers, proudly. "And though it kill me, I have kept my oath of
vengeance!"
The wind moans ominously around the creaking gables, the thunder
mutters hoarsely, the blue flame of the lightning casts its ghastly
glare into the room. No one heeds the fierce war of the elements in the
fiercer war of human passions raging within the gloomy chamber.
"Yes, you have kept your oath, curse you, curse you!" Marcia Cleveland
answers, venomously. "You have dragged me and mine down to poverty, to
shame, to madness! But live, Vera Campbell, live yet a little longer,
and you shall see your weapons turned against yourself. You will be
thrust from your splendid home and high estate, branded, disgraced,
while I shall reign in your stead! But the sweetness will be taken
from my revenge. You have driven my daughter, the light of my eyes and
heart, mad, mad! It is a wound that naught on earth can heal. Oh, curse
you, curse you! May you never know one hour of peace! May you be racked
by every ill that flesh is heir to! May God's----"
The terrible curse she is invoking stays forever on her lips! A
blinding flash of forked and vivid blue lightning shatters the window
panes, rends the curtains, and darts into the room like a living sword.
A peal of awful thunder seems to rend the earth in twain, and the
old house rocks for a moment like an infant's cradle. Then the rain
rushes wildly again, and the thunder subsides into ominous mutterings
and long, rolling sounds of terrible wrath, and Marcia Cleveland lies
prone upon the floor, her distorted face upturned to the light, a
single blue spot on her temple telling its awful story to the shocked
beholders--slain by the _lightning_!
"Oh, my poor, young mistress, you are dead, too! We shall all be
killed!" Mrs. Robson exclaims in an access of mortal terror, for Lady
Vera, overcome by the horrors of that dreadful night has fallen back in
a deathly swoon upon her pillow.
At that cry of grief the two who have lingered at the door spring into
the room. Mr. Sharpe, the detective, and Colonel Lockhart.
It is Mr. Sharpe who recoils from the sight of the two dead bodies, and
the still sadder sight of the living madwoman, crooning her senseless
songs, and counting her jewels in a distant corner.
Colonel Lockhart has no eyes for these. At one bound he is by the
bedside where the missing countess lies cold and white and still in all
her beauty.
"Oh, Vera, my love, my darling, have I found you only for this?" he
groans, taking the slight form into his arms, pressing it to his aching
heart, and lavishing passionate kisses on the cold, white lips.
But as if his love had power to call her back to life, Lady Vera sighs
faintly and opens her eyes, heavily at first then with a flash of
wondrous brightness in them as she recognizes her lover.
"Oh, Philip, is it you?" she sighs with ineffable content, nestling
closer in his strong loving clasp. "I thought I was dying, but your
voice has called me back from the world of shadows. I cannot die, now
that you have come for me. Am I safe at last, Philip?"
"You are safe at last, my darling," he answers, solemnly, and glancing
behind him with a slight shudder. "A terrible retribution has overtaken
your enemies."
"I know," she answers, shuddering. "Is it not fearful, Philip? But oh,
tell me," she continues, pleadingly, "am I responsible for the terrible
ending of these selfish lives?"
"No, Vera. They were wicked people whose sins wrought out their
own retribution. No blame can attach to you, darling," he answers,
decisively.
"Do you really know this lady, sir?" inquires poor Betsy Robson,
touching him timidly on the arm.
"Yes," he answers, looking round at her. "She is the Countess of
Fairvale, my betrothed wife, whom Leslie Noble abducted from her home."
"Oh, me, and I thought she was Mr. Noble's crazy wife. _He_ said so,"
cries Mrs. Robson, dissolved in penitent tears. "Oh, my lady, can you
ever forgive me for not listening to your true story?"
"Freely, my poor creature, since you were always kind to me," Lady Vera
answers, moved to greatest compassion by the woman's humble penitence.
Then, with something of a shudder, Lady Vera turns back to her lover.
"It seems a dreadful thing to do, but you must search Mr. Noble's
person," she says. "He had the stolen memorandum-book."
"My lady, I have already taken the liberty of doing as you suggest,"
Mr. Sharpe answers, respectfully, advancing with the gold-clasped book
in his hand.
She takes it from him with a subdued cry of joy.
"And now, Vera, when will you feel able to leave this dreadful place?"
inquires Colonel Lockhart.
"To-morrow," she answers, promptly.
"Then we will start for London in the morning. How glad Sir Harry and
Nella will be," he exclaims. "And now, Sharpe, we will, with this good
woman's assistance, make some arrangement for removing Lady Vera from
this scene of horror into another chamber."
"There's only the kitchen," Mrs. Robson said, dismayed at her lack
of resources. "All the chambers but this are leaky and damp. But the
kitchen where I cook and sleep is warm and dry."
"The kitchen will suit me excellently well; anywhere but this," Lady
Vera answers, shuddering. "You must bring poor Ivy, too," she adds,
with a compassionate glance at the poor, insane creature.
The maniac went willingly enough, satisfied to go anywhere so long as
she was not parted from her beloved jewels, and the warm, clean kitchen
was felt by all to be a safe haven of refuge from the inclement night
and the horror-haunted chamber up-stairs.
The remainder of the night was spent in a wakeful vigil. The next
morning the gentlemen made hurried preparations for the inquest that
was necessary to be held over the dead.
It was found that Mrs. Cleveland had come to her death by a stroke of
lightning, and that Leslie Noble had been murdered by Ivy Cleveland.
But human vengeance was powerless to touch poor Ivy. The hand of
God had already smitten her. A lunatic asylum received her for the
remainder of her poor, wrecked life.