"Not a word, not a word, villain, villain without remorse or shame! I am guilty, and might excuse myself by pleading your treachery. But I make no excuse. But for you,—for you,—where is the excuse? You have dishonored the wife,—made the child fatherless,—your work is complete! Go!"
Beverly saw that all his schemes had been unraveled; conscious of his guilt, and conscious that everything was at an end between him and Joanna, he made a desperate attempt to rally his usual self-possession; or, perhaps, impudence would be the better word.
He moved to the door, and placed his hand upon the lock.
"Well, madam, as you will," he said, and bowed. "Under the circumstances, I can only wish you a very good evening."
He opened the door.
"Hold!" she cried in a voice that made him start.—"Your work is complete, but so, also, is mine—"
She paused; her look excited in him a strange curiosity for the completion of the sentence. "You will not long enjoy your triumph. You have not an hour to live. The wine which you drank was poisoned."
Beverly's heart died in him at these words. A strange fever in his veins, a strange throbbing at the temples, which he had felt for an hour past, and which he had attributed to the excitement resulting from the events of the day, he now felt again, and with redoubled force.
"No,—no,—it is not so," he faltered.—"Woman, you are mad,—you had not the heart to do it."
"Had not the heart?" again she burst into a loud laugh,—"O, no, I was but jesting. Look here,"—she darted to the bed, flung the curtain aside, and disclosed the lifeless form of her husband,—"and here!" gliding to another part of the room, she gently drew a cradle into light, and throwing its silken covering aside, disclosed the face of her sleeping child,—that cherub boy, who, as on the night previous, slept with his rosy cheek on his bent arm, and the ringlets of his auburn hair tangled about his forehead, white as alabaster. "And now look upon me!" she dilated before him like a beautiful fiend; "we are all before you,—the dead husband, the dishonored wife, the fatherless child,—and yet I had not the heart,"—she laughed again.