“I swear you shall not live to do it!”
“I will!” again said Elsie.
“Then I’ll shoot you dead before you do it!” cried Henderson, fiercely, pointing the revolver at Elsie as he spoke.
The woman did not flinch as the man had done. Perhaps she felt that all her life was ended that was worth living for. At all events she did not swerve.
“Swear that you will not go near Miss Churchill; that you will never tell your father anything of what has been between us,” continued Henderson, still pointing the revolver at Elsie’s head, “or by the heavens above us I’ll shoot you!”
“I will tell my father to-night; I will see Miss Churchill to-morrow.”
These were almost the unhappy woman’s last words. Henderson, maddened by anger, by the wine he had drunk, and by her obstinacy, with a savage oath pulled the trigger of the weapon he held, and the next moment Elsie, with a cry, made a little spring forward, and a moment later fell fatally wounded at his feet.
Then Henderson began to realize what he had done. He laid the revolver on the grass; he knelt down at Elsie’s side.
“Elsie, you are not any worse, are you?” he said; “I only meant to frighten you, I only—”
As he was speaking the moon, which had hitherto been partly obscured and hidden by the drifting clouds, suddenly shone out in its full radiancy. It shone on the face of a woman struggling in her death throes; on a ghastly wound which had torn open one side of her shapely throat, and from which a stream of blood was pouring fast.