"Oh! I know your good heart, beloved Cecilia," exclaimed the rector; and as she cast down her eyes beneath his looks, he glared upon her for a moment with the ferocity of a tiger. "But you will be surprised—yes, agreeably surprised," he added composedly, "when you call upon my solicitor—which you must do to-morrow! Here is his address."
"To-morrow!" echoed Cecilia, turning deadly pale. "You cannot mean to——to——"
"To take this poison to day?" said Reginald. "Yes—this evening at seven o'clock you may pray for my soul!"
"Oh! this is, indeed, dreadful!" cried Cecilia. "Give me back that phial—or I will raise an alarm!"
"Foolish woman! Will you not be worth twenty thousand pounds!" ejaculated Reginald. "And fear not that you will be compromised. I shall leave upon this table a letter that will exculpate you from any suspicion of having been the bearer to me of the means of self-destruction—even if it be discovered who it was that visited me here as my alleged sister."
"This consideration on your part is truly generous, Reginald," said Cecilia, in whose breast the mention of the twenty thousand pounds had stifled all compunction.
"We must now part, Cecilia—part for ever," observed the rector. "Go—do not offer to embrace me—I could not bear it!"
"Then farewell, Reginald—farewell!" exclaimed Cecilia, who was not sorry to escape a ceremony which she had anticipated with horror—for the idea that her paramour was a murderer was ever present in her mind.
"Farewell, Cecilia," added the rector; and he turned his back to the door.