The ground is measured, all is arranged. Cleveland, a splendid shot, fired first. He grazed Vivian’s elbow. Vivian fired in the air. The seconds interfered. Cleveland was implacable, and, “in the most irregular manner,” as Sir John declared, insisted upon another shot. To the astonishment of all, he fired quite wild. Vivian shot at random, and his bullet pierced Cleveland’s heart. Cleveland sprang nearly two yards from the ground and then fell upon his back. In a moment Vivian was at the side of his fallen antagonist, but the dying man “made no sign;” he stared wildly, and then closed his eyes for ever!
CHAPTER VI
When Vivian Grey remembered his existence he found himself in bed. The curtains of his couch were closed; but as he stared around him they were softly withdrawn, and a face that recalled everything to his recollection gazed upon him with a look of affectionate anxiety.
“My father!” exclaimed Vivian; but the finger pressed on the parental lip warned him to silence. His father knelt by his side, and then the curtains were again closed.
Six weeks, unconsciously to Vivian, had elapsed since the fatal day, and he was now recovering from the effects of a fever from which his medical attendants had supposed he never could have rallied. And what had been the past? It did indeed seem like a hot and feverish dream. Here was he once more in his own quiet room, watched over by his beloved parents; and had there then ever existed such beings as the Marquess, and Mrs. Lorraine, and Cleveland, or were they only the actors in a vision? “It must be so,” thought Vivian; and he jumped up in his bed and stared wildly around him. “And yet it was a horrid dream! Murder, horrible murder! and so real, so palpable! I muse upon their voices as upon familiar sounds, and I recall all the events, not as the shadowy incidents of sleep, that mysterious existence in which the experience of a century seems caught in the breathing of a second, but as the natural and material consequences of time and stirring life. O, no! it is too true!” shrieked the wretched sufferer, as his eye glanced upon a despatch-box which was on the table, and which had been given to him by Lord Carabas; “It is true! it is true! Murder! murder!” He foamed at the mouth, and sank exhausted on his pillow.
But the human mind can master many sorrows, and, after a desperate relapse and another miraculous rally, Vivian Grey rose from his bed.
“My father, I fear that I shall live!”
“Hope, rather, my beloved.”
“Oh! why should I hope?” and the sufferer’s head sank upon his breast.