"Harriet!"
With a great cry he rose and held her to his heart.
"My wife, my wife!"
And then, weak with long illness and repeated shocks—this last, greatest shock of all—he sat down, faint unto death.
"Oh, my love, my wife! to think that I should hold you once more in my arms, look once more into your living face! My wife, my wife! How cruel, how merciless I have been to you! May God forgive me! I will forgive myself—never!"
"Not one word! Between us there can be no such thing as forgiveness. We could neither of us have acted other than as we did. My oath bound me—your honor was at stake. We have both suffered—Heaven only knows how deeply. But it is past now. Nothing in this lower world shall ever come between us again, my beloved!"
"Not even death," he said, folding her close to his heart.
One month after and Sir Everard Kingsland, his wife, and sister quitted England for the Continent, not to make the grand tour and return, but to reside for years. England was too full of painful memories; under the sunlit skies of beautiful Italy they were going to forget.
Sybilla Silver was dead. All her plans had failed—her oath of vengeance was broken. Sir Everard and his bride were triumphant. She had failed—miserably failed; she thought of it until she went mad—stark, staring mad. Her piercing shrieks rang through the stony prison all day and all night long, until one night, in a paroxysm of frenzy, she had dashed her head against the wall. They found her, in the morning, dead.
* * * * *