In another moment she was kneeling beside it, and then she stretched out her arm as if to hide the white, blood-stained face from Leslie.
"Keep back! Don't come near!" she gasped in a paroxysm of terror. "Oh, Leslie, Leslie, it is he!"
Leslie sank on to her knees, and put Lucy's arm aside, and looked at the face.
"He is dead!" she screamed. "Dead! I have killed him!" And uttering heartbroken wails like some wild, distraught creature, she took his head upon her bosom and held it there, calling upon his name in an agony of despair and remorse.
CHAPTER XLIII.
"LESLIE, YOUR WIFE!"
Lucy stood and wrung her hands, looking round helplessly, almost terrified out of her senses by Leslie's terrible outburst of passionate grief. But her helplessness lasted only for a moment or two. She bent down and shook, literally shook, Leslie's shoulder.
"He is not dead!" she said, "but he will be if we let him lie here!"
She had hit upon the surest way of rousing Leslie. She stopped the awful wailing, held Yorke's face from her and looked at it—oh, with what a scrutiny!—then sprang to her feet.