“Does anyone believe the ravings of the dying!” I answered—“She was, as I have said, suffering the torments of poison and passion,—and in those torments wrote as one tormented....”
“Is it impossible to convince you of the truth?” asked Mavis solemnly,—“Are you so diseased in your spiritual perceptions as not to know, beyond a doubt, that this world is but the shadow of the Other Worlds awaiting us? I assure you, as I live, you will have that terrible knowledge forced upon you some day! I am aware of your theories,—your wife had the same beliefs or rather non-beliefs as yourself,—yet she has been convinced at last! I shall not attempt to argue with you. If this last letter of the unhappy girl you wedded cannot open your eyes to the eternal facts you choose to ignore, nothing will ever help you. You are in the power of your enemy!”
“Of whom are you speaking, Mavis?” I asked astonished, observing that she stood like one suddenly appalled in a dream, her eyes fixed musingly on vacancy, and her lips trembling apart.
“Your Enemy—your Enemy!” she repeated with energy—“It seems to me as if his Shadow stood near you now! Listen to this voice from the dead—Sibyl’s voice!——what does she say?——‘Oh God, have mercy!——I know who claims my worship now and drags me into yonder rolling world of flame ... his name is—’” ...
“Well!” I interrupted eagerly——“She breaks off there; his name is——”
“Lucio Rimânez!”
said Mavis in a thrilling tone—“I do not know from whence he came,—but I take God to witness my belief that he is a worker of evil,—a fiend in beautiful human shape,—a destroyer and a corrupter! The curse of him fell on Sibyl the moment she met him,—the same curse rests on you! Leave him if you are wise,—take your chance of escape while it remains to you,—and never let him see your face again!”
[p 433]
She spoke with a kind of breathless haste as though impelled by a force not her own,—I stared at her amazed, and in a manner irritated.
“Such a course of action would be impossible to me, Mavis,”—I said somewhat coldly—“The Prince Rimânez is my best friend—no man ever had a better;—and his loyalty to me has been put to a severe test under which most men would have failed. I have not told you all.”
And I related in a few words the scene I had witnessed between my wife and Lucio in the music-gallery at Willowsmere. She listened,—but with an evident effort,—and pushing back her clustering hair from her brows she sighed heavily.