The key turned; they were alone together within those ma.s.sive walls.
"I thought we parted yesterday for the last time in this lower world,"
said the baronet, calmly.
"Did you? You were mistaken, then. We meet again and part again forever to-night, for the last time in this lower world, or that upper one either, in which you believe, and which I know to be a very pretty little fable."
She laughed a low, derisive laugh, and came up close to him. He shut his book, and looked at her in wonder.
"What do you mean? Why have you come hither to-night? Why do you look like that? What is it all?"
"It is this! That the mask worn two long years is about to be torn off. It means that you are to hear the truth; it means that the purpose of my life is fulfilled; it means that the hour of my triumph has come."
He sat and looked at her, lost in wonder.
"You do not speak--you sit and stare as though you could not believe your eyes or ears. It is hard to believe, I know--the humble, the meek Sybilla metamorphosed thus. But the Sybilla Silver you knew was a delusion. Behold the real one, for the first time in your life!"
"Woman, who are you? What are you?"
"I am the granddaughter of Zenith the gypsy, the woman your father wronged to the death, and your bitterest enemy, Sir Everard Kingsland!"
"The granddaughter of Zenith the gypsy?" he repeated. "Then Sybilla Silver is not your name?"
"The name is as false as the character in which she showed herself--that of your friend."
"And yet, the first time we met you saved my life."
"No thanks for that. I did not know you, though if I had I would have saved it, all the same. That was not the death you were to die. I saved you for the gallows."
"Sybilla, Sybilla!"
"I saved you for the gallows!" she repeated. "I come here to-night to tell you the truth, and you shall hear it. Did I not swear your life away? Did I not nurse you back from the jaws of death? All for what?
That the astrologer"s prediction might be fulfilled--that the heir of Kingsland Court might die a felon"s death on the scaffold!"
"The astrologer"s prediction?" he cried, catching some of her excitement. "What do you know about that?"
"Everything--everything!" she exclaimed, exultingly. "Far more than you do, for you only know such a thing exists--you know nothing of its contents. Oh, no! mamma guarded her darling boy too carefully for that, notwithstanding your dying father"s command. But in spite of her it has come true."
"What was the astrologer"s prediction--that terrible prediction that shortened my father"s life?"
"It was this--that his only son and heir, born on that night, would die by the hand of the common hangman, a murderer"s death on the scaffold.
Enough to blight any father"s life who believed in it, was it not?"
"It was devilish. My poor father! Tell me the name of the fiend incarnate who could do so diabolical a deed, for you know?"
"I do. That man was my father."
"Your father?"
"Ay, Achmet the Astrologer. Ha! ha! As much an astrologer as you or I. It was his part of our vengeance--my part was to see it carried out. I swore, by my dying mother"s bedside, to devote my life to that purpose. Have I not kept my oath?"
She folded her arms and looked at him with a face of devilish malignity. He recoiled from her as from a visible demon.
"For G.o.d"s sake, go! You bring a breath of h.e.l.l into this prison.
Go--go! You have done your master"s work. Leave me!"
"Not yet; you have heard but half the truth. Oh, potent Prince of Kingsland, hear me out! You will be hanged tomorrow morning for murdering your wife! You didn"t murder her, did you? Who do you suppose did it?"
He rose to his feet, staggered back against the wall, his eyes starting from their sockets.
"Great G.o.d!"
"Ah, you antic.i.p.ate, I see. Yes, my lord of Kingsland, I murdered your pretty little wife! Keep off! I have a pistol here, and I"ll blow your brains out if you come one step nearer--if you utter a word! I don"t want to cheat Jack Ketch, if I can. And it is no use your crying for help--there is no one to hear, and these stone walls are thick.
Stand there, my rich, my n.o.ble, my princely brother, and listen to the truth."
He stood, holding by the wall, paralyzed with horror.
"Yes, I murdered her!" Sybilla reiterated, with sneering triumph.
"Disguised in your clothes, using your dagger; and she died, believing it to be you. All I told, and all the boy Dawson told at the trial was true as the Heaven you believe in. Your wife was true as truth, pure as the angels. She loved only you--she loved you with her whole heart and soul. Her vow by the bedside of her dying father chained her tongue. To save you the shame, the humiliation of learning the truth about her degraded mother, she met in secret this Mr. Parmalee. On that night she went to the stone terrace to see her mother, for the first, the last, the only time. I arranged it all--I lured her there--I stabbed her, and flung her over into the sea! I hated her for your sake--I hated her for her own. And to-morrow, for my crime, you will die!"
And still he gazed, paralyzed, stunned, speechless.
"Poor fool!" she said, with unutterable scorn--"poor, blind, besotted fool! and this is the end of all! Young, handsome, rich, high-born, surrounded by friends, the wealthy and the great, one woman"s work brings you to this! I have said my say, and now I leave you; here we part, Sir Everard Kingsland. Call the jailer; tell him what I have told you--tell it through the length and breadth of the land, if you choose. Not one will believe you. It is an utterly mad and impossible tale. I have only to calmly and scornfully deny it. And to-morrow, when the glorious sun rises I will be far away. In Spain, the land of my mother and my grandmother, I go to join our race--to become a dweller in tents--a gypsy, free as the wind that blows. The gold your lavish hand has given me will make me and my tribe rich for life. I go to be their queen. Farewell, Sir Everard Kingsland. My half hour has expired; the jailer comes to let me out. But first I go straight from here to Kingsland Court, to tell your mother what I have just told you--to tell her her idolized son dies for my crime, and to kill her, if I can, with the news."
The door swung open--Miss Silver flitted out. It broke the spell. The prisoner started forward, tried hoa.r.s.ely, vainly to speak. Enfeebled by long illness, by repeated shocks, he staggered a pace or two and fell face forward at the jailer"s feet like a log.
CHAPTER x.x.xIII.
BETWEEN LIFE AND DEATH.
And while Sir Everard Kingsland lay in his felon"s cell, doomed to die, where was she for whose murder he was to give his life? Really murdered?
Harriet--Lady Kingsland--was not dead. Hundreds of miles of sea and land rolled between her and Kingsland Court, and in a stately New York mansion she looked out at the sparkling April sunshine, with life and health beating strong in her breast.
Mr. George Washington Parmalee had saved her life. On that tragic night of March tenth, he had quitted the Blue Bell with Mrs. Denover, and descended at once to the sh.o.r.e, where a boat from the "Angelina Dobbs" was awaiting them.
Mr. Parmalee took the oars and rowed away in the direction of the park.
The sickly glimmer of the moon showed him the stone terrace and the solitary figure standing waiting there. But the noise of the wash on the beach and the sighing of the trees prevented Harriet from hearing the dip of the sculls. On the sea the night was so dark that the boat glided along unseen.
He had neared the spot and rowed softly along under the deep shadow of overhanging trees, when he espied a second figure, m.u.f.fled in a cloak, emerge and confront the lady. He recognized, or thought he recognized, the baronet, and came to a deadlock, with a stifled imprecation.
"It"s all up with them three hundred pounds this bout," he thought; "confound the luck!"
He could not hear the words--the distance was too great--but he could see them plainly. The wild shriek of Lady Kingsland would have been echoed by her terrified mother had not the artist clapped his hand firmly over her mouth.
"Darnation! Dry up, can"t you? Oh, good G.o.d!"