It was near midnight, and Sibyl lay with her hands clasped over her forehead, when suddenly she heard the front door burst violently open, and through the silent house arose the wild, terrific, appalling shriek of "Murder!"
CHAPTER XXI.
THAT NIGHT.
"Come, madness! come with me, senseless death!
I cannot suffer this! Here, rocky wall,
Scatter these brains, or dull them!"—DE MONTFORD.
About an hour before the storm burst upon the island, Edgar Courtney, the victim of his own diabolical passions, reached it unseen and unobserved. "You will await my return here," he said, as he was moving away. "I must be back in N—— before morning."
"Don't know 'bout that," said the boy who had taken him over; "there's an awful storm rising; but if you ain't afeared to venture, I ain't."
Mr. Courtney glanced at the dark, sullen sky, but what was the storm without compared with the storm within? Leave the island he must before morning, so he replied:
"I must go back, let it storm as it will. You can remain here sheltered under these rocks till I come back."
And wrapping his cloak around him, he moved swiftly away, and concealed himself behind some overhanging trees to await the result.
The spot where he stood commanded a view of the sea on all sides. And, therefore, when in the deepening gloom, some hours after, he saw a boat approach the isle, containing the form of a woman, he had not a single doubt as to who that woman was.