SWOOPING DOWN.
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Twice it called, so loudly called With horrid strength beyond the pitch of nature; And murder! murder! was the dreadful cry. A third time it returned with feeble strength, But o’ the sudden ceased; as though the words Were smothered rudely in the grappled throat. And all was still again, save the wild blast Which at a distance growled— Oh, it will never from the heart depart! That dreadful cry all in the instant stilled.—Baillie. |
Lyon Berners remained walking up and down the room some time longer. The lights were all out, and the servants gone to bed. Yet still he continued to pace up and down the parlor floor, until suddenly piercing shrieks smote his ear.
In great terror he started forward and instinctively rushed towards Rosa’s room, when the door was suddenly thrown open by Rosa herself, pale, bleeding from a wound in her breast.
“Great Heaven! What is this?” he cried, as, aghast with amazement and sorrow, he supported the ghastly and dying form, and laid it on the sofa, and then sunk on his knees beside it.
“Who, who has done this?” he wildly demanded, as, almost paralyzed with horror, he knelt beside her, and tried to stanch the gushing wound from which her life-blood was fast welling.
“Who, who has done this fiendish deed?” he reiterated in anguish, as he gazed upon her.
She raised her beautiful violet eyes, now fading in death; she opened her bloodless lips, now paling in death, and she gasped forth the words:
“She—Sybil—your wife. I told you she would do it, and she has done it. Sybil Berners has murdered me,” she whispered. Then raising herself with a last dying effort, she cried aloud, “Hear, all! Sybil Berners has murdered me.” And with this charge upon her lips, she fell back dead.
Even in that supreme moment Lyon Berners’ first thought, almost his only thought, was for his wife. He looked up to see who was there—who had heard this awful, this fatal charge.