Presently, through her stupor, she felt herself called by a moaning voice and made painful clutches towards consciousness. She knew that Rosamond wanted her and struggled bravely in spirit to break the bonds that held the body.
"Oh," pleaded the voice, "he is dead indeed, and it is I who have made him dead: Harry—Harry!"
* * * * *
All at once Aspasia found herself awake—a blast of cold air had rushed into the drowsy secret atmosphere. The door had been flung open and one had entered—a man who came with quick clean tread, whose face was pale, as if indeed risen from the dead, but whose eyes shone with a wonderful light of life.
The woman in the bed reared herself up with outflung arms, and, as he who entered went straight to her, she cast herself upon his breast with a great cry.
"Oh, Harry, Harry, Harry!"
Such a cry had the walls of the manor-house surely never held before. It might have been the voice of all the anguish and all the ecstasies it had known these centuries. It rang round the old walls; every echo took it up and answered it, as if they had been waiting for it.
BOOK III
CHAPTER I
Bethune had soon packed his simple baggage; then he went straight to bed, setting his will upon sleep, against thought.