He was standing then, and attempted to hurl the glass at the empty chair.
"Curse you!" he shrieked in a frenzied outburst, and again, "Curse you! Curse you all!"
He dropped, his face striking upon the table with a thud; his arms were stretched straight in front of him, across the board, and he remained so, breathing stertorously. After some minutes he began to hiccough with such violence that his shoulders heaved spasmodically and his foot scraped on the floor. But these convulsions, by and by, came to be marked with longer intervals between them, and finally his shoulders lifted once and subsided in a single, long, slow exhalation.
The rain still reverberated from the roof; the candles flickered out one by one; occasionally the dull embers in the fireplace crackled faintly until they too became cold—nothing but gray, sodden ashes.
Then it was that the wan light of day began to show through the boarded windows; the shadows once more to flit through the chambers and the echoing halls; then it was that a venturesome mouse advanced to the centre of the floor, where, in the untouched comestibles of last night's feast, he discovered enough to maintain himself and his colony royally for many weeks.
And encountering nothing to alarm him, he remained.
CHAPTER VI
AN ARREST
It is in life's supreme moments that destiny calls the loudest.
Miss Charlotte stands in the Westbrook morning-room, her demeanor plainly indicating nervousness and irresolution. From time to time she looks in a hesitating way at Doctor Westbrook's broad back, as he stares out of the window. Presently she speaks, as if with an effort; but her deliciously soft and gentle voice in its free and expressive play falls upon the listener's ears so like a harmony struck from silver strings, that to say it breaks the silence is to use a phrase too harsh.