The young wanderer came up the steps, and standing in front of the pale and fainting invalid, took off his hat, and in a stern voice demanded—as if he had the most sacred right to demand:
“Tudor Hereward! Where is Lilith?”
“Lilith! How dare you utter that name!—the name of the lady whose destruction you have compassed?” faintly yet indignantly demanded Hereward.
“No! not I, sir! I never wounded her by a word! I never wronged her by a thought! Your senseless jealousy has wrought all this ruin! Only ten days ago, in the remote Southwestern town where I was fulfilling an engagement, did I happen to pick up an old copy of the New York Pursuivant, and read the account of her dead body having been found three weeks after she had disappeared from her home! I threw up my engagement and came here with all speed, for well I guessed that you, and you only, had the secret of her disappearance and her death. For—‘Jealousy is as cruel as the grave!’”
“Had I no just cause for jealousy?” demanded Hereward, thrown upon his defence, trembling with weakness and scarcely conscious of having instinctively put the question.
“No!—as the Lord is my judge and yours! A better, truer, purer woman than Lilith never lived! A holier tie than that which bound us never united man and woman!” retorted Ancillon. “Utterly blameless, though reckless folly and egotism, if not even insanity, placed her in a false position, created false appearances about her. But should all this have led you to suspect Lilith? Lilith, who was brought up at your good, wise father’s feet, and by your side? Lilith, who was so carefully trained in all wisdom and goodness? Lilith, whose religious and self-sacrificing spirit you knew so well? Should any false appearances have shadowed the brightness of Lilith’s image in your eyes?”
“Man! Hold your peace! I am passing from earth, soon to meet Lilith in the better world, if repentance and faith can take me there. I wish not to quarrel with you now!”
“I will not hold my peace! I came here to ask you—Where is Lilith?”
“And you ask it in the tone in which the minister reads the question: ‘Cain, where is thy brother Abel?’ Lilith is in her grave,” moaned Hereward.
“Yes, she is. And you have put her there. You have as surely murdered your young wife as if you had plunged a sword through her bosom, like that black brute, Othello, whom I never could consider a ‘noble’ Moor, and never would personate to please anybody. Othello, when he found out his mistake, had the decency to kill himself—the only decent thing he ever did do! But you, Tudor Hereward—the law cannot hang you for driving your young wife out to death. Why have you not had the manhood to hang yourself?”