Oh! the wild soaring flight of that joyous song!
Through the partly closed window it burst and flooded the room with its gladness and cheer. Death stayed his hand.
The little silken feathered throat of her darling’s pet had turned aside the “Grim Sickle.”
She heard it. Out over the entrancing beauty of Autumn-dyed vegetation, her sad eyes wandered—wandered wistfully over nature bathed in the splendor of the sun’s radiance. She heeded the call, and then, appalled at her contemplated sin, she cowered—bowed down—lower, lower. In tones of resignation—tones tremulous with awe of the Omnipotent, she said: “Have pity upon me, Merciful Heaven!”
And then very softly Virginia knelt beside her, gently encircling her waist with her arm, and looked into her spiritual face with eyes overflowing with tears. In a broken voice, scarcely articulate through a great sob, she said: “Oh, Constance! Constance, dear, I am punished enough already!”
After Hazel had completed her attire for a visit to Mrs. Harris, she descended the stairs with the same feeling of gloom and depression upon her.
Slow and hesitating as was her action—as though undecided as to the propriety of leaving Constance, and while drawing on her gloves, she aimlessly wandered into the music room and listlessly sat on the piano stool. Then, with her head turned looking out of the window, she let her fingers ramble over the keys of the instrument. Then she saw Virginia pass up the walk and enter the house, but after the lapse of a few moments and her cousin not appearing, Hazel entered the drawing room to greet her—but too late. Through the open door she heard a step on the main stairs above. Hazel followed. On passing the table the divorce bill caught her eye. For a moment she paused and picked it up; then laid it down, her breath coming in gasps, for she instantly realized a crisis of a very grave moment had appeared. She ran upstairs, surmising that Virginia was connected with the “divorce bill,” for she had not seen Mr. Williams.
And then she heard Virginia’s voice. Softly she stole to the door and looked in. There, kneeling on the floor, were Constance and Virginia, looking into each other’s eyes, Constance drawn back in timid alarm, and Virginia blinded with tears, clasping the hand that held the laudanum phial, her free arm thrown lovingly around Constance’s waist.
Hazel silently drew back, an overpowering emotion suffusing her eyes with tears. “Poor Constance! Her trouble thickens fast. What will the end be?”