"Is my—I wish to see my wife, madam," he managed to say, while every word seemed choking him.
"Your wife is in the parlor, Mr. Courtney," said Mrs. Brantwell, gravely, as she held open the door for him to enter—ascribing his evident agitation to a far different cause.
For one moment his wild, maniac eyes were riveted upon her with a look that actually terrified the good minister's wife. Reeling unsteadily, as though he had suddenly received a violent blow, he passed her and entered the parlor.
And there before him on the sofa, supported by pillows, her little pale face looking out from its masses of floating golden hair, with a look of beseeching entreaty to be forgiven, lay she whom he supposed buried forever under the wild waves. For in instant he stood paralyzed, speechless, with ashen face and dilating eyes. And then the last glimpse of hope and reason fled, and with a terrific cry, that froze the life-blood of the hearers, the wretched man fell senseless on the floor.
CHAPTER XXIII.
MORNING IN THE ISLAND.
"And she was gone, and yet they breathed,
But not the breath of human life—
A serpent round each heart was wreathed,
And stung their every thought to strife."—BYRON.
And how dawned that morn on Campbell's Lodge? How on the widow's cottage?
With that appalling shriek, that most terrible of all cries, that unearthly scream of murder ringing in her ears, Sibyl sprang from her sleepless couch, and while her very heart thrilled with horror, waited for what was to come next.
Through the lonely, silent old house, it echoed and re-echoed like a knell of doom; but it was not repeated. She could hear the wild wind rushing through the open door, awakening strange, ghostly noises through the high, empty rooms, but nothing else.