“Silence!” exclaimed Frederick, “and cease to taunt me about your gifts and presents. They have been purchased dearly enough in all conscience. I have never given you the right to control my actions. Although I may be a mere boy compared to you, yet I am old enough to take care of myself.
“Is that it, then? So I am too old for you! You dare to let me see that all your pretenses of love were only due to your greed for my wealth! The widow is good enough to furnish you with money and to help you to pay your numerous debts! But you require something younger, lovelier, and more attractive than I am, to satisfy your passions.”
Frederick muttered a terrible oath.
“I wonder,” she continued, “what your friend Col. Fitzpatrick will say when I inform him how you have betrayed his hospitality and dishonored his daughter. As there is a heaven above us, I swear to take such a revenge, both on you and upon your light-o'-love, that you will live to curse the day on which you were born.”
Frederick, exasperated beyond all expression, shook her hand roughly off his arm, saying as he did so:
“Do anything you please, but be silent now! You have said more than enough! I have done forever with yourself, your money, and the very questionable charms of your acquaintance! Good-evening.”
Turning his back on her, he was about to effect his retreat when the frantic woman bounded toward him and clutched him by his coat with such violence that he nearly lost his balance.
“Thief, coward, traitor! You shall not leave me thus!” hissed the widow through her clenched teeth.
Almost blind with rage, Frederick caught her by both arms and pushed her from him with such brutality that she fell backward, striking her head as she did so on the jagged edge of a broken marble column. The young man attempted to raise her from the ground, but she lay back lifeless on the greensward.
Trembling with fear, Frederick put his hand to her heart. It had ceased to beat. For the second time within the space of six months Frederick had become a murderer. The full horror of the situation flashed through his mind like a streak of lightning. He must leave Baroda at once. But how was he to do so without money? Not a moment was to be lost, and without casting a look behind him he hurried toward the city, leaving the corpse of his victim lying among the ruins of the temple, with her poor livid face and wide-open eyes, still distorted by passion, turned upward toward the dark heavens, where the crescent of the new moon was rising.