“Sent for de doctor! Hum. Dat piece ob ’ception ain’t a gwine to do no good. Lord, Lord, did I ebber expect to lib to see dis awful day? Dough I hab offen an’ offen prophesied as how murder would be done in dis forsak, unlawful house, did I ebber expect as it would come to pass? He’s done it, an’ he’ll sure to be hung, an’ den what is to come ob de place? O-o-m-me,” groaned the woman, as she returned to her post of duty.
At these dreadful words, the voice of the child, that had sunk into low sobs, now arose in wails of anguish.
The next moment the door was thrown open and Marcellus de Crespigney hurried into the room, haggard, ghastly, with distended eyeballs and disheveled hair. After rapidly glancing around the room, his eyes fell upon the form lying on the lounge, and he hurried up to it, breathing hard, as he put the questions:
“How is she? How is she? Better?”
The appalled woman silently moved aside and the child crouched down upon the floor and made room for him.
He stooped anxiously over the rigid form, looked deeply into the marble face and uttered a cry which those that heard never forgot in all their after life.
Then dashing his hand violently against his forehead, he flung himself down by the couch, and dropped his head upon the cold breast of his wife, wailing forth:
“Dead! Dead! Dead! And I have killed her! I, a murderer, most accursed!”
He was totally unconscious of the sobbing child at his feet, or the frowning woman who stood with folded arms, like a black Nemesis, at his back. He had eyes for neither—for nothing but the lifeless form before him.
Gazing on her, pressing his lips to her cold brow, again and again, he broke into the most violent lamentations, the most awful self-accusations.