Cruel As The Grave Part 32

"With _her_! I am a Berners!" answered Sybil, haughtily.

"But you bitterly wrong that lady in your thoughts!"

"Bah! I caught her in your arms! on your breast! her lips clinging to yours!"

"The first and last kiss! I swear it by all my hopes of Heaven, Sybil--a brother's kiss!"

Sybil made a gesture of scorn and disgust.

"If I were not past laughing, I should have to laugh now," she said.

"And you will not believe this?"

She shook her head.

"And you will not be reconciled to this injured young stranger?"

"I! I am a lady--'or long have dreamed so,'" answered Sybil, haughtily.

"At least the daughter of an honest mother. And I will not even permit such a woman as that to live under the same roof with me another day.

She leaves in the morning."

"The house is yours! You must do as you please! But this I tell you: that in the same hour which sees that poor and friendless young creature driven from the shelter of this roof, I leave it too, and leave it for ever."

If Lyon Berners really meant this, or thought to bring his fiery-hearted wife to terms by the threat, he was mistaken in her character.

"Oh, go!" she answered bitterly--"go! I _will_ not harbor _her_. And why should I seek to detain you? Your heart has left me already; why should I wish to retain its empty case? Go as soon as you like, Lyon Berners.

Good-night, and--good-bye," she said, and with a wave of her hand she pa.s.sed from the room.

He was mad to have spoken as he did; madder still to let her leave him so! how mad, he was soon to learn.

CHAPTER XIX.

SWOOPING DOWN.

Twice it called, so loudly called With horrid strength beyond the pitch of nature; And murder! murder! was the dreadful cry.

A third time it returned with feeble strength, But o' the sudden ceased; as though the words Were smothered rudely in the grappled throat.

And all was still again, save the wild blast Which at a distance growled-- Oh, it will never from the heart depart!

That dreadful cry all in the instant stilled.--BAILLIE.

Lyon Berners remained walking up and down the room some time longer. The lights were all out, and the servants gone to bed. Yet still he continued to pace up and down the parlor floor, until suddenly piercing shrieks smote his ear.

In great terror he started forward and instinctively rushed towards Rosa's room, when the door was suddenly thrown open by Rosa herself, pale, bleeding from a wound in her breast.

"Great Heaven! What is this?" he cried, as, aghast with amazement and sorrow, he supported the ghastly and dying form, and laid it on the sofa, and then sunk on his knees beside it.

"Who, who has done this?" he wildly demanded, as, almost paralyzed with horror, he knelt beside her, and tried to stanch the gus.h.i.+ng wound from which her life-blood was fast welling.

"Who, who has done this fiendish deed?" he reiterated in anguish, as he gazed upon her.

She raised her beautiful violet eyes, now fading in death; she opened her bloodless lips, now paling in death, and she gasped forth the words:

"She--Sybil--your wife. I told you she would do it, and she has done it.

Sybil Berners has murdered me," she whispered. Then raising herself with a last dying effort, she cried aloud, "Hear, all! Sybil Berners has murdered me." And with this charge upon her lips, she fell back DEAD.

Even in that supreme moment Lyon Berners' first thought, almost his only thought, was for his wife. He looked up to see who was there--who had heard this awful, this fatal charge.

_All_ were there! guests and servants, men and women, drawn there by the dreadful shrieks. All had heard the horrible accusation.

And all stood panic-stricken, as they shrank away from one who stood in their midst.

It was she, Sybil, the accused, whose very aspect accused her more loudly than the dying woman had done; for she stood there, still in her fiery masquerade dress, her face pallid, her eyes blazing, her wild black hair loose and streaming, her crimsoned hand raised and grasping a bloodstained dagger.

"Oh, wretched woman! most wretched woman! What is this that you have done?" groaned Lyon Berners, in unutterable agony--agony not for the dead beauty before him, but for the living wife, whom he felt that he had driven to this deed of desperation. "Oh, Sybil! Sybil! what have you done?" he cried, grinding his hands together.

"I? I have done nothing!" faltered his wife, with pale and tremulous lips.

"Oh, Sybil! Sybil! would to Heaven you had died before this night! Or that I could now give my life for this life that you have madly taken!"

moaned Lyon.

"I have taken no life! What do you mean? This is horrible!" exclaimed Sybil, dropping the dagger, and looking around upon her husband and friends, who all shrank from her. "I have taken no life! I am no a.s.sa.s.sin! Who dares to accuse me?" she demanded, standing up pale and haughty among them.

And then she saw that every lowered eye, every compressed lip, every shuddering and shrinking form, silently accused her.

Mr. Berners had turned again to the dead woman. His hand was eagerly searching for some pulsation at the heart. Soon he ceased his efforts, and arose.

"Vain! vain!" he said, "all is still and lifeless, and growing cold and stiff in death. Oh! my wretched wife!"

"The lady may not be dead! This may be a swoon from loss of blood. In such a swoon she would be pulseless and breathless, or seem so! let me try! I have seen many a swoon from loss of blood, as well as many a death from the same cause, in my military experience," said Captain Pendleton, pus.h.i.+ng forward and kneeling by the sofa, and beginning his tests, guided by experience.

His words and actions unbound the spell of horror that had till then held the a.s.sembled company still and mute, and now all pressed forward towards the sofa, and bent over the little group there.

"Air! air! friends, if you please! Stand farther off. And some one open a window!" exclaimed Captain Pendleton, peremptorily.

And he was immediately obeyed by the falling off of the crowd, one of whom threw open a window.

"Some one should fetch a physician!" suggested Beatrix Pendleton, whose palsied tongue was now at length unloosed.

And half a dozen gentlemen immediately started for the stables to dispatch a messenger for the village doctor from Blackville.

"And while they are fetching the physician, they should summon the coroner also," suggested a voice from the crowd.

"No! no! not until we have ascertained that life is actually extinct,"

exclaimed Captain Pendleton, hastily; at the same time seeking and meeting the eyes of Mr. Berners, with a meaning gaze said: