CHAPTER III.
THE TRAGEDY.
Violet hastened back to the drawing-room to be met by anxious friends with pale, frightened faces.
Some one tried to intercept her, but Violet’s eyes were riveted upon one figure—Mrs. Rutledge.
That lady had fallen helplessly upon a sofa, and was weeping hysterically, wringing her white hands in uncontrollable grief. The shriek which had resounded through the house, terrifying the guests, had issued from her lips. It was she who had first discovered the dread thing that had occurred.
Secretly troubled by Violet’s anxiety over her mother, Mrs. Rutledge had stolen up to Mrs. Arleigh’s room, only to come flying down again, her face like the face of a dead woman, and shrieks of horror issuing from her pale lips. She had found the door of the room unlocked, and turning the knob, her eyes fell upon a ghastly sight.
Seated near the table in an easy-chair was her sister, Rosamond Arleigh—stone dead! One cold hand had grasped a crumpled piece of paper; on the table close by an empty vial labeled “Chloral—Poison.”
Had she died by her own hand?
How Violet found out all the particulars of the ghastly story, she never knew. The first thing of which she was conscious, she was kneeling at her mother’s side, her arms about the cold, dead form, kissing the rigid lips, and begging her over and over again to speak or give some sign that she still lived. In all the impotence of her awful grief the child knelt there, weeping, moaning.
Dead! Could it be possible? Her mother, who had been more like an elder sister to her than a parent—her beautiful, sad-faced mother, who had been to the girl the light of her eyes, the very soul of her!
Some one unwound the clinging arms from about the cold form at last, and Leonard Yorke led Violet away, to make room for the physician and coroner, who had arrived together.
Just as Leonard led the girl from the chamber of death the little gilded clock on the mantel chimed forth the hour—two!
Such a short—such a very short time since she had been the happiest, most care-free of creatures, and now all her happiness was over, all the foam gone from the beaker of life! To her the whole world was altered.
Leonard led the orphan girl into the library, and closing the door, left her alone; and there Mrs. Rutledge found her, crouching in the depths of an easy-chair, her wan little face drooping like a fading lily. Mrs. Rutledge slipped into the girl’s cold hand a piece of crumpled paper. It was the same that had been found between the stiffened fingers of the dead woman.
“You had better try to read it, my dear,” she said, softly. “It seems to be a paper of importance. The inquest is over, and the coroner is puzzled. There is no trace of poison in the body. It is all a mystery——”
She checked herself abruptly, for Violet had opened the crumpled paper, and was reading what was written there—reading it with eyes dilated and dark with awful horror, a slow change creeping over her girlish face, a change that was fearful to see. Her features seemed to freeze down into a stone mask, and an icy look of despair settled slowly over her face. With a low moan, she crumpled the letter in her hand and staggered to her feet. She did not swoon away, or moan, or cry out, after the fashion of ordinary women. To her, as with many natures that suffer most intensely, the boon of unconsciousness was denied.
Trembling like a leaf, she stood with that fatal letter clutched in one shaking hand, her dark eyes staring straight before her, fixed and wild.
The library door opened softly, and a man crossed the threshold. Her eyes fell upon his face, and she started with a low cry of horror and hatred, a cry which ended in a broken moan of despair.
It was Gilbert Warrington.