He turned from his companion and walked away abruptly. No human eyes must see how keen and bitter was his grief. No human eyes must see tears fall like rain from the eyes of one of England’s proudest peers.
They had left her alone, and she sank back in her chair overpowered again by the strange, faint, fluttering pain at her heart.
“What can it be?” she gasped. “Is it death?”
And there came to her a memory of how, when she was a child, those pains had troubled her, and the doctors said something about disease of the heart. Was it that—was it death’s cold hand clutching at her heart and causing it first to beat so madly, then almost to stop, that sent such strange shuddering through every nerve?
Oh, welcome death! Death that would place her at Ronald’s side again. Once more the pain passed, and she looked around her with frightened eyes.
“I wish I were not quite alone,” she said. “Oh Ronald, Ronald, how cruel has fate been to us! Oh! my own love! my dearest, only love! Are you where you can hear me? Ronald, when I call to you, do you hear me? My husband, I have kept my vow; I was willing to die for you; I would have gone to the scaffold and have smiled while I died for you. There came a strong temptation to me when they told me you were dead, for one moment—a temptation to save myself—but I trampled it under foot. I will save you, and screen you still; your fair name, even in death, is dearer to me than my own life.”
She looked at the little parcel still clinched in her hand.
“I must destroy it,” she said. “Ronald is dead. He is safe when this is destroyed; it matters but little what becomes of me. Oh! my love! my love! You repented before you died. I pray that I may stand at your side again.”
She tried to rise to destroy that packet, but fell back with a long, shuddering moan; the cold hand had touched her heart again, the sharp, intolerable anguish thrilled every nerve.
“It is death,” she whispered, faintly; “death, and I am all alone—death, and I have no strength to destroy this!”