“Oh, my lord, do not go that way, I entreat you,” she exclaimed, barring the passage with her extended arms.
“Oh, my lady,” said he, looking at her so pale and trembling, with fright never more plain on a human face, “I knew that you did not like me: but I had no idea you hated me to this degree.”
Incapable of remaining any longer beside his wife without an outburst, he reeled for a space like an intoxicated man; recovering himself, he rushed out of the room with an exclamation of pain which echoed in the depths of the hearer’s heart.
She watched him till he was out of sight; she listened till she could no longer hear his departing carriage, and then with a breaking heart, dreading that she had not enough motherly love to combat with this other passion, she darted into the bedroom, calling out:
“Sebastian,” but no voice replied.
By the trembling of the night-lamp in a draft she perceived that the window was open. It was the same by which the child was kidnapped fifteen years before.
“This is justice,” she muttered; “did he not say that I was no more his mother?”
Comprehending that she had lost both husband and child at the period when she had recovered them, Andrea threw herself on the couch, at the end of her resignation and her prayers exhausted.
Suddenly it seemed to her that something more dreadful than her sorrowful plight glided in between grief and her tears.
She looked up and beheld a man, after climbing in at the open window, standing on the floor.