Too well she knew what verdict a physician would pass upon her treatment of the young girl.
"The bell-handle is behind you," she whispered, as she passed the cringing Barnhurst. He did not seem to heed her; but the moment that she passed him and resumed her former place, he fixed his stupefied gaze once more upon the visage of Dermoyne.
As for Dermoyne, for a moment he stood buried in profound thought. The clergyman trembled closer to the wall as he remarked the livid paleness of Arthur's face,—the peculiar light in Arthur's eyes.
Dermoyne, after a moment, advanced and extended his hand—"Come," he said, and sought to grasp Barnhurst's hands. But, shuddering and half dead with fright, Herman crouched away from the extended hand,—crouched and cringed away as though he would bury himself in the very wall.
"Come," again repeated Dermoyne, his voice changed and husky. "Come!" He grasped the hand of the clergyman and dragged him to the bedside. "Oh, look upon that sight!" he groaned as the tortured girl writhed before them—"Look upon that sight, and tell me, what fiend of hell ever, even in thought, planned a deed like this?"
"Don't kill me, don't, don't!" faltered Herman.
"This is a strange meeting," continued Dermoyne, with a look that made Herman's blood run cold; "here we are together, you and I and Alice! I that loved her better than life, and would have been glad to have called her by the sacred name of wife. You, that without loving her or caring for her, save as the instrument of your brutal appetite, have made her what she is,—have made her what she is, and brought her here to die in a dark corner, something worse than the death of a dog. And Alice, poor Alice, who saw you first in the pulpit, and then listened to you and yielded to you in the home,—her father's home,—Alice lies before you now. Hark!"
The poor girl stretched forth her hands, and with the foam still white upon her livid lips, she said, in her wandering way—
"Oh! Herman, dear Herman! it was not father that was hurt, was it? Oh! are you sure, are you sure?" And then came wandering words about father, Herman, home, and—her lost condition. There was something too, about returning to father and asking his forgiveness when the danger was over.
"And you desire her death." In his agony, as he uttered these words, Arthur clutched Herman with a gripe that forced a groan from his lips. "You who have brought her to this,—" he pointed to the bed,—"while I desire her to live; I, that by her death will become the sole inheritor of her father's fortune."