CHAPTER X.
THE SECRET MARRIAGE.
Reverend Silas Van de Lear was drawing his latest breaths in the house of one of his elder sons, and only his lips were seen to move in silent prayer, when a younger fellow-clergyman entering, to a cluster of his cloth attending there, said audibly:
"This is a strange denouement to the great Kensington scandal, which has happened this afternoon."
The large, voluptuous lady with the slowly declining eyelids raised them quietly as in languid surprise.
"You mean the Zane murder? What is it?" asked a minister, while others gathered around, showing the ministry to have human curiosity even in the hour and article of death.
"Miss Agnes Wilt, the especial favorite of our dying patriarch here, was married to young Andrew Zane some time before his father died. There was no murder in the case. Zane the elder, in one of his frequent fits of wild and arrogant rage, which were little less than insanity, killed his partner, Rainey, and in as sudden remorse took his own life."
"What was the occasion of Zane's rage?"
"That is not quite clear, but the local population here is in a violent reaction against the accusers of young Zane and his wife. The church recovers a valuable woman in Agnes Zane."