Murdered! dead! lying there with her heart's blood flowing round her! Dead! murdered! while he had slept!
All the sudden shock and terror of his bereavement came over him in a sudden passion of despair.
He uttered one long, low cry, and fled from the room.
CHAPTER LXXXII.
HOW THE NEWS WAS TOLD.
Lord Linleigh rushed from the room like one mad—he was utterly lost. That his beautiful daughter, who was to have been married that day, lay there murdered and dead, was an idea too terrible to contemplate. He fled from the place, but he could not fly from reality. How, in Heaven's name, was he to confront the mother of this unhappy girl? How was he to tell her lover? What was he to do?
For once the courage of the Studleighs—oh, fatal boast!—failed him. He sank down on the last step of that fatal staircase, white, sick, trembling, and unmanned.
"What shall I do?" he moaned to himself. "Oh, Heaven, what shall I do?"
It must be told—there was no time to lose: even now he could hear a hurried murmur, as of expectation and fear.
When he rose to return his limbs trembled like those of a little child; he was compelled to clutch the iron rail and the boughs of the trees for support. It was not sorrow—he had not realized yet that it was his daughter, his only child who lay dead—he was simply stunned with horror. The dead face, the crimson-stained hair, the bare white breast with its terrible wound, the sun shining over the ghastly scene.