"Poor fool!" she said, with unutterable scorn—"poor, blind, besotted fool! and this is the end of all! Young, handsome, rich, high-born, surrounded by friends, the wealthy and the great, one woman's work brings you to this! I have said my say, and now I leave you; here we part, Sir Everard Kingsland. Call the jailer; tell him what I have told you—tell it through the length and breadth of the land, if you choose. Not one will believe you. It is an utterly mad and impossible tale. I have only to calmly and scornfully deny it. And to-morrow, when the glorious sun rises I will be far away. In Spain, the land of my mother and my grandmother, I go to join our race—to become a dweller in tents—a gypsy, free as the wind that blows. The gold your lavish hand has given me will make me and my tribe rich for life. I go to be their queen. Farewell, Sir Everard Kingsland. My half hour has expired; the jailer comes to let me out. But first I go straight from here to Kingsland Court, to tell your mother what I have just told you—to tell her her idolized son dies for my crime, and to kill her, if I can, with the news."
The door swung open—Miss Silver flitted out. It broke the spell. The prisoner started forward, tried hoarsely, vainly to speak. Enfeebled by long illness, by repeated shocks, he staggered a pace or two and fell face forward at the jailer's feet like a log.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
BETWEEN LIFE AND DEATH.
And while Sir Everard Kingsland lay in his felon's cell, doomed to die, where was she for whose murder he was to give his life? Really murdered?
Harriet—Lady Kingsland—was not dead. Hundreds of miles of sea and land rolled between her and Kingsland Court, and in a stately New York mansion she looked out at the sparkling April sunshine, with life and health beating strong in her breast.
Mr. George Washington Parmalee had saved her life. On that tragic night of March tenth, he had quitted the Blue Bell with Mrs. Denover, and descended at once to the shore, where a boat from the "Angelina Dobbs" was awaiting them.
Mr. Parmalee took the oars and rowed away in the direction of the park. The sickly glimmer of the moon showed him the stone terrace and the solitary figure standing waiting there. But the noise of the wash on the beach and the sighing of the trees prevented Harriet from hearing the dip of the sculls. On the sea the night was so dark that the boat glided along unseen.
He had neared the spot and rowed softly along under the deep shadow of overhanging trees, when he espied a second figure, muffled in a cloak, emerge and confront the lady. He recognized, or thought he recognized, the baronet, and came to a deadlock, with a stifled imprecation.
"It's all up with them three hundred pounds this bout," he thought; "confound the luck!"