Chaste as Ice, Pure as Snow: A Novel

by C. Despard

The two men and the child pressed on. They had left the path behind them, they were winding between huge boulders, the débris from some devastating avalanche; like a mighty wall the mountains rose above them, hedging them in on the one side, while on the other was the continuation of the pine wood.

The guide had given up the lantern to Arthur; he could not manage both it and the child, and the young man, a few yards in advance, was seeking on hands and knees for further traces of footsteps in the snow.

The groans had not been repeated, and from this Arthur augured badly. It might be that the dying had passed into the dead. The young man's heart was sad. He had reckoned so entirely on the success of his enterprise, he had been so full of hope, and now it seemed as if the whole—all his hopes, all his efforts—was to be swamped in this sudden horror. For even if Maurice had escaped unhurt, even if the life of his enemy had fallen by his hand in his first horror at the discovery of that enemy's dark treachery, what would the result be on his own mind, on those of others?—to Margaret, who above all things had entreated that this man should be unharmed; to Laura, who loved him with all the strength of her young soul; to Maurice himself, who would feel when the deed was done that it was wrongly done, for this man had thrown himself, alone and helpless, into his hands, carrying as a peace-offering the act of expiation for his past wrongs, the confession of Margaret's spotless innocence. Arthur had gathered from Laura's words, beyond the possibility of a doubt, that this, and only this, had been the intention of L'Estrange in seeking an interview with Mr. Grey.

If he could only have foreseen all this, he said to himself mournfully, it might have been so different.

The voice of the child awoke him from his sad musing. It was very low, but in the stillness of that snowy night the slightest sound wrote its impress on the air. The earth itself seemed to be listening. "We're very near them now," she said; "I am sure we are. There, there! listen! The trees are shaking."

Almost instinctively the two men obeyed her imperative gestures. They rounded a great shoulder of rock. It led them on to a kind of plateau, studded here and there with stunted, snow-laden pines, ending abruptly in a depth of darkness, for what lay beyond the ravine that bounded it was hidden by the snow-vapors.

At first they saw nothing, but a certain feeling warned them to pause and look round attentively.

"Put me down," cried the child, and as if in answer to her call the branches of the pine that overhung the precipice crackled and stirred.

This excited Laura. She broke loose from the guide, and once more outstripping her companions rushed forward over the snow. A moment more, and her cry, partly of joy, partly of pain, drew Arthur to the spot. It was on the very brink of the ravine, under an overhanging pine tree, whose black shadow on the moonlit snow had prevented them from discovering what lay beneath it.

L'Estrange was outstretched there, silent, motionless, to all appearance dead. Laura was on her knees beside her friend, calling out to him piteously to open his eyes and speak to her. In her excitement the little one had not seen at first that there was another there—that the head of her friend was on the knees of a man who sat upright on the cold snow, his back resting against the stem of a pine tree. That man was her father—Maurice Grey.