She pointed solemnly upstairs, and he bounded up the steps two at a time, as though madness was in his veins.
“Theresa! Theresa!” he cried, “I am here!”
He stepped into the bedroom, and saw her before him in the sweet dream of death—her hands folded over her breast, and beside her a huge bunch of the flowers that she had loved so well.
He kissed the dead face, that even now seemed to smile up at him; he shed bitter tears, for he knew that poor Theresa had died for love of him!
They had found her that morning in the old summer arbor—cold and still. Her heart was broken.
Immediately after his wife’s funeral Sir Harold went abroad. The sympathy of his friends was as distasteful to him as the slanderous gossip of the careless and vicious. Never before within the memory of mortal man had the county been in such a turmoil! Following the viscount’s suicide, Lady Gaynor had vanished like a shadow, leaving her servants and debts behind her.
The parting between Lady Elaine and Sir Harold was one that was never forgotten by either. With the concurrence of Mr. Worboys, she had made her home with a widowed sister of Colonel Greyson in a lovely little place among the hills and vales of lovely Kent.
“I will never lose sight of him, Elaine,” the colonel said, “and the future may yet be filled with golden promise!”