“I intend to be your friend if you will allow me to be so,” he replied, suavely.
“Impossible!” cried Queenie. “It is against nature for you to wish to be my friend when I come between you and a fortune.”
“It is neither the time nor the place to tell you all that is in my thoughts,” he responded, “but I may as well drop you a slight hint as to their trend. What would be easier than for you in the near future to reimburse me with the fortune which you are the means of taking from me?”
“You mean for me to one day marry you?” she gasped.
“I see you have divined my thoughts most accurately, my fair Queenie,” he answered.
She shrank from him in loathing too great for words, crying:
“Not for this whole world would I marry you, Raymond Challoner. I would sooner die.”
“Do not decide too hastily, my fair enemy,” he returned, mockingly. “Remember, ‘discretion is the better part of valor,’ as the old saw goes. I shall leave you now, for it would never do for us to be found here together. I will see you early on the morrow.”
Before she was aware of what he was about to do, he had raised her jeweled hand to his lips, kissed and dropped it, and the door was closing softly after him.
When the doctor arrived, and the servants ushered him into the sick room, they found the beautiful young bride lying prone upon her face in a dead faint by the side of the still, stark form lying in his last sleep upon the couch.