The moments wore on—profound silence reigned through the house. Once doctor and clergyman stole in together, glanced at the prostrate man, glanced at each other, and drew back. Priest and physician were alike powerless here. The creeping shadow that goes before was upon that ghastly face already. Death was in the midst of them. Without opening his eyes a sudden tremor ran through the senseless form from head to foot. Helen lifted her awe-struck face. That tremor shook him for a moment as though the soul were forcibly rending its way from the body. Then he stretched out his limbs and lay still.
CHAPTER XXIII.
"JENNIE KISSED ME."
t is a bright but chilly May day. In the luxurious sitting-room of Mrs. Liston-Darcy a coal fire is burning, and in a purple arm-chair before this genial fire Mrs. Darcy sits.
She is looking very handsome as she sits here, the brilliant morning sunshine streaming across her dusk beauty and loosely-rippling hair—very handsome in her rose-pink wrapper, with a soft drift of lace about the slim throat and wrists. Very handsome, and yet a trifle out of sorts, too; for the dark, slender brows are contracted, and the brown, luminous eyes gaze sombrely enough into the depths of the fire. She sits looping and unlooping in a nervous sort of restlessness the cord and tassels that bind her slender waist, one slippered foot beating an impatient tattoo on the hassock, her lips compressed in deep and unpleasant thought. About the room, great trunks half-packed stand; in the wardrobe adjoining, her maid is busily folding away dresses. Evidently an exodus is at hand.