She wrote a letter to him for his mother, at her dictation, adding a little tear-blotted postscript of her own, making no mention of her own great love and the sorrow that had darkened her young life. In that letter she urged him to keep up brave spirits; that everything was being done for Gerelda, his wife, that could be done; that she was sitting up night and day nursing her.
When Hubert Varrick received that tear-stained missive, in the loneliness of his desolate cell he bowed his head and wept like a child, crying out to Heaven that he was surely the most wretched man on God's earth.
He tried to think out all the horrors of that bitter midnight tragedy, which seemed more like a dream to him than a reality. He could not understand how Gerelda came by that wound, unless, through her terrible rage, she had attempted to take her life by her own hand; and through the same intense rage, strong even in death, wanted to persecute him even after she had known that her moments were numbered.
As for Gerelda, her life hung by the slenderest of threads for many days after, and during these anxious hours no one could induce Jessie Bain to leave her bedside. But at last the hour came when the doctors pronounced Gerelda out of danger.
Chapter XXXII.
CAPTAIN FRAZIER PLOTS AGAIN.
We must return to Captain Frazier, whom we left standing at the gate when he had parted from the minister, who had gone into the Varrick mansion to make arrangements for the wedding which was to take place on the morrow.