Blair glanced at the clock.
"No, no," he said. Then his face darkened. "Will you go to Mr. Ambrose's room and send him to me?" he said.
"Mr. Ambrose has gone into the city, and has not returned yet, my lord," said the man. "I thought your lordship knew——"
"Wait in the hall until he returns, and ask him to come to me," said Blair.
He passed on and entered Violet's boudoir. His note lay on the table where he had left it, and he tore it in pieces and dropped it on the fire. Then he paced to and fro, stopping to listen now and again.
All was still in Violet's room, and he began to ask himself the question if it was necessary for him to see her. Could he not write and tell her all that he had discovered; could he not break it to her in some way? Why should he not leave the place with Margaret alone, within an hour or two, and see Violet no more?
But his spirit rebelled against the suggestion. It seemed unmanly and unworthy. No, he would go through with his task to the bitter end. First Violet, then the other conspirator, Austin Ambrose. Still he waited. The hands of the clock toiled round the dial, and chimed the hour. With a start he nerved himself and knocked at the door. No response followed, and he knocked again and again, more loudly. Then he opened the door and entered.
The next instant he staggered back with a cry of horror.
Stretched upon the bed was the woman he had made his wife, and lying at her feet was the man who had been at once her dupe and her master. As Blair bent over to raise her, he fell back shuddering, for he saw that she was dead! At the same instant the white hand of the man lying at her feet dropped lifelessly and slid away. Blair, who had been about to strike him, saw a small vial lying at his feet.
Small as it was, it had contained sufficient poison for Austin Ambrose. It was the vial he had carried in his breast for months past, for which he had felt that night when he thought that Blair had discovered his villainy. It was for this that he had plotted and schemed with a heartless ruthlessness that an Iago might have envied! To find the woman he had loved and entrapped snatched by Death from his grasp in the very hour of his triumph, and to finish his career—a Suicide!