"It is I, mother--at last. I could come no sooner. The ballet was very long to-night."
"And my Sunbeam was bravoed, and encored, and crowned with flowers, was she not?"
"Yes, mother; but never mind that. How are you tonight?"
"Dying, my own."
The _danseuse_ fell on her knees with a shrill, sharp cry.
"No, mother--no, no! Not dying! Very ill, very weak, very low, but not dying. Oh, not dying!"
"Dying, my daughter!" the sick woman said. "I count my life by minutes now; I heard the city clocks strike eleven; I counted the strokes, for, my Sunbeam, it is the last hour thy mother will ever hear on earth."
The ballet-dancer covered her face, with a low, despairing cry. The dying mother, with a painful effort, lifted her own skeleton hand and removed those of the girl.
"Weep not, but listen, _carissima_. I have much to say to thee before I go; I feared to die before you came; and even in my grave I could not rest with the words I must say unsaid. I have a legacy to leave thee, my daughter."
"A legacy?"
The girl opened her great black eyes in wide surprise.
"Even so. Not of lands, or houses, or gold, or honors, but something a thousand-fold greater--an inheritance of hatred and revenge!"
"My mother!"
"Listen to me, my daughter, and my dying malediction be upon thee if thou fulfillest not the trust. Thou hast heard the name of Kingsland?"
"Ay, often; from my father ere he died--from thee, since. Was it not his last command to me--this hatred of their evil race? Did I not promise him on his death-bed, four years ago? Does my mother think I forget?"
"That is my brave daughter. You know the cruel story of treachery and wrong done thy grandmother, Zenith--you know the prediction your father made to my father, Sir Jasper Kingsland, on the night of his son"s birth. Be it thine, my brave daughter, to see that prediction fulfilled."
"You ask a terrible thing, my mother," she said, slowly; but I can refuse you nothing, and I abhor them all. I promise--the prediction shall be fulfilled!"
"My own! my own! That son is a boy of twelve now--be it yours to find him, and work the retribution of the G.o.ds. Your grandmother, your father, your mother, look to you from their graves for vengeance. Woe to you if you fail!"
"I shall not fail!" the girl said, solemnly. "I can die, but I can not break a promise. Vengeance shall fall, fierce and terrible, upon the heir of Kingsland, and mine shall be the hand to inflict it. I swear it by your death-bed, mother, and I will keep my oath!"
The mother pressed her hand. The film of death was in her eyes. She strove to speak; there was a quick, dreadful convulsion, then an awful calm.
Within the same hour, with miles between them, Sir Jasper Kingsland and Zara, his outcast daughter, died.
The dawn of another day crept silently over the Devon hill-tops as Lady Kingsland arose from her husband"s deathbed.
White, and stark, and rigid, the late lord of Kingsland Court lay in the awful majesty of death.
The doctor, the rector, the nurse, sat, pale and somber watchers, in the death-room. More than an hour before the youthful baronet had been sent to his room, worn out with his night"s watching.
It was the Reverend Cyrus Green who urged my lady now to follow him.
"You look utterly exhausted, my dear Lady Kingsland," he said. "Pray retire and endeavor to sleep. You are not able to endure such fatigue."
"I am worn out," she said. "I believe I will lie down, but I feel as though I should never sleep again."
She quitted the room, but not to seek her own. Outside the death-chamber she paused an instant, and her face lighted suddenly.
"Now is my time," she said, under her breath. "A few hours more and it may be too late. His safe, he said--the secret spring!"
She flitted away, pallid and guilty looking, into Sir Jasper"s study.
It was deserted, of course, and there in the corner stood the grim iron safe.
"Now for the secrets of the dead! No fortune-telling jugglery shall blight my darling boy"s life while I can help it. He is as superst.i.tious as his father."
With considerable difficulty she opened the safe, pulled forth drawer after drawer, until the grim iron back was exposed.
"The secret spring is here," she muttered. "Surely, surely, I can find it."
For many minutes she searched in vain; then her glance fell on a tiny steel k.n.o.b inserted in a corner. She pressed this with all her might, confident of success.
Nor was she deceived; the k.n.o.b moved, the iron slid slowly back, disclosing a tiny hidden drawer.
Lady Kingsland barely repressed a cry as she saw the paper, and by its side something wrapped in silver tissue. Greedily she s.n.a.t.c.hed both out, pressed back the k.n.o.b, locked the safe, stole out of the study and up to her own room.
Panting with her haste, my lady sunk into a seat, with her treasures eagerly clutched. A moment recovered her; then she took up the little parcel wrapped in the silver paper.
"He said nothing of this," she thought. "What can it be?"
She tore off the wrapping. As it fell to the floor, a long tress of silky black hair fell with it, and she held in her hand a miniature painted on ivory. A girlish face of exquisite beauty, dusky as the face of an Indian queen, looked up at her, fresh and bright as thirty years before. No need to look at the words on the reverse--"My peerless Zenith"--to know who it was; the wife"s jealousy told her at the first glance.
"And all these years he has kept this," she said, between her set teeth, "while he pretended he loved only me! "My peerless Zenith!"
Yes, she is beautiful as the fabled houris of the Mussulman"s paradise.
Well, I will keep it in my turn. Who knows what end it may serve yet?"
She picked up the tress of hair, and enveloped all in the silver paper once more. Then she lifted the folded doc.u.ment, and looked darkly at the superscription:
"Horoscope of the Heir of Kingsland."
"Which the heir of Kingsland shall never see," she said, grimly unfolding it. "Now for this mighty secret."
She just glanced at the mystic symbols, the cabalistic signs and figures, and turned to the other side. There, beautifully written, in long, clear letters, she saw her son"s fate.
The morning wore on--noon came; the house was as still as a tomb.
Rosine, my lady"s maid, with a cup of tea, ventured to tap at her ladyship"s door. There was no response.
"She sleeps," thought Rosine, and turned the handle.
But at the threshold she paused in wild alarm. No, my lady did not sleep. She sat in her chair, upright and ghastly as a galvanized corpse, a written paper closely clutched in her hand, and a look of white horror frozen on her face.