Any determined thief could easily have entered the house and worked his will upon the poor young neglected wife and the property.
“Oh Alick, dear Alick, if you could know how much I suffer, you would not leave me so,” she groaned, wringing her hands and rising in her restlessness to walk the floor.
But almost immediately her worshipping heart rebuked her for having cast even a shadow of reproach upon her husband, and she hastened to add,
“But it is my own fault. He has done everything for my comfort here; given me a beautiful home, and attentive servants. And I ought to be happy and courageous. Instead of that, I am sad and timid, and altogether unworthy to be called his wife. I do not wonder that he wearies of me.”
So weeping and wringing her hands she paced up and down the floor, until in turning around she faced the front, unclosed windows, and suddenly uttered a piercing shriek and fell upon her face in a deadly swoon.
And well she might. For peering in at the window, from the darkness without was a livid white face—a man’s stern face.
CHAPTER XXIV.
THE SPECTRAL FACE.
I felt my senses slackened with the fright
And a cold sweat shrilled down, o’er all my limbs,
As if I’d been dissolving into water.—Dryden.