“It is all a lie, a hideous lie! You have forged it—to shame me in the eyes of my lover.”
“Not so,” said Olive, most tenderly; “no one in the wide world knows this, but we two. No one ever shall know it! Oh, would that you had listened to me, then I should still have kept the secret, even from you! My sister—my poor sister!”
“Sister! And you are his child, his lawful child, while I—— But you shall not live to taunt me. I will kill you, that you may go to your father, and mine, and tell him that I cursed him in his grave!”
As she spoke, she wreathed her arms round Olive's slight frame, but the deadly embrace was such as never sister gave. With the marvellous strength of fury, she lifted her from the floor, and dashed her down again. In falling, Olive's forehead struck against the marble chimney-piece, and she lay stunned and insensible on the hearth.
Christal looked at her sister for a moment,—without pity or remorse, but in motionless horror. Then she unlocked the door and fled.
CHAPTER XLIV.
When Olive returned to consciousness she was lying on her own bed, the same whereon her mother had died. Olive almost thought that she herself had died too, so still lay the shadows of the white curtains, cast by the one faint night-lamp that was hidden on the floor. She breathed heavily in a kind of sigh, and then she was aware of some watcher close beside, who said, softly, “Are you sleeping, my dear Olive?”
In her confused fancy, the voice seemed to her like Harold's. She imagined that she was dead, and that he was sitting beside her bier—sorrowfully—perhaps even in tenderness, as he might look on her then. So strong was the delusion, that she feebly uttered his name.
“It is Harold's mother, my dear. Were you dreaming about my son?”