"Yes. Your Herbert Mayne is not what you think him."
"Not what I think him? Why? What do you mean?"
"I mean," said Tera, slowly, "that he has been deceiving you. He has been married already. Zara the gipsy was his wife. I can prove it."
[CHAPTER XIX]
"THE TRUTH WILL OUT"
When Farmer Carwell came home to supper, he found the house in wild commotion. On hearing Tera's intelligence and proving the truth of it, Rachel fainted away, and had recovered her senses only to go from one fit of hysteria into another. She was as deeply in love with Herbert as a girl of her temperament well could be, and the discovery of his treachery rendered her for the moment quite beside herself with mingled rage and grief. Now that she knew the unhappy Zara had been his wife, she was ready to declare he had murdered the girl. He had grown tired of her, no doubt, as men will of the most affectionate of women, and had cast her off. When she returned to assert her rights and require their marriage to be publicly announced, the man had killed her brutally and in cold blood. All this Rachel shrieked out with amazing vigour, and it was as much as ever Tera could do to keep her in her room.
For quite an hour she raved like a crazy-creature. At the end of that time she seemed worn out; her nervous energy had spent itself, and, completely exhausted, she fell into a deep sleep. Then only was Tera able to leave her. It was necessary she should do so, for Carwell, below, was clamouring impatiently to know what was amiss. Jack, of course, was as much in the dark as the farmer himself, and Tolai, cut off from all knowledge of these strange white people, crouched in a corner trembling. To him, though a very warrior among his own kind, such domestic upheaval was all strange. He knew not what evil it might portend; and he was scared, no doubt, by the horrors of his own imagination.
"Whatever is the matter, lass?" demanded Carwell, anxiously, and a trifle angrily; "is Rachel ill?"
"She is--very ill; but now she sleeps. She will be better soon. But, Mr. Carwell, I have bad news for you."
"Out with it, then. It won't improve for the keeping. Is it about Rachel?"