She leaned over the rail. Down below—far down—she could see a slender figure, with long hair blowing in the blast, lying awfully still on the sands. Not five feet off the great waves washed, rising, steadily rising. In five minutes more they would wash the feet of the terrace—that slender figure would lie there no more.
"The fall alone would have killed her. Before I am half-way back to the house those waves will be her shroud."
She wrapped her cloak around her and fled away—back, swift as the wind, into the house, up the stairs. Safe in her own room, she tore off her disguise. The cloak and the trousers were horribly spotted with blood. She made all into one compact package, rolled up the dagger in the bundle, stole back to the baronet's dressing-room and listened, and peeped through the key-hole. He was not there; the room was empty. She went in, thrust the bundle out of sight in the remotest corner of the wardrobe, and hastened back to her chamber. Her letter still lay where she had left it. The baronet bad not yet returned.
In her own room Miss Silver secured the door upon the inside, according to custom, donned her night-dress, and went to bed—to watch and wait.
* * * * *
The mess dinner was a very tedious affair to one guest at least. Major Morrell and the officers told good stories and sung doubtful songs, and passed the wine and grew hilarious; but Sir Everard Kingsland chafed horribly under it all, and longed for the hour of his release.
A dull, aching torture lay at his heart; a chill presentiment of evil had been with him all day; the tortures of love and rage and jealousy had lashed him nearly into madness.
Sometimes love carried all before him, and he would start up to rush to the side of the wife he loved, to clasp her to his heart, and defy earth and Hades to part them. Sometimes anger held the day, and he would pace up and down like a madman, raging at her, at himself, at Parmalee, at all the world.
He was haggard and worn and wild, and his friends stared at him and shrugged their shoulders, and smiled significantly at this outward evidence of post-nuptial bliss.
It was almost midnight when the young baronet mounted Sir Galahad and rode home. Kingsland Court lay dark and still under the frowning night sky. He glanced up at the window of his wife's chamber. A light burned there. A longing, wistful look filled his blue eyes, his arms stretched out involuntarily, his heart gave a great plunge, as though it would break away and fly to its idol.