He was wrong, but he had never realized in his indifference to Rosalind that the girl had doted on him with her whole heart, or that slighted love had driven her to madness. It is true she would not have looked at him twice had he been penniless, but having looked, she had truly loved.
Charley read on from his letter that his father was sailing soon for America, and he hoped they would not forget the promised visit to bid him farewell.
“We will go to-morrow,” the young man said eagerly. “I will tell my chauffeur to have everything ready for a fine automobile trip, so that we may go as fast as the wind, for there is nothing I enjoy so much.”
When the order had been given he returned to clasp her to his heart, and say, with passionate devotion:
“Do not think I am fretting because my sisters will have nothing to say to us. Although I love them well, I love you, my dearest, more than all the world besides. I can be happy without them, and perhaps it is best we should remain sundered from the family since Rosalind is to make one of it, and she would always be plotting against us. Henceforth we will live only for each other.”
Next day came the terrible accident, when the automobile, flying from Trouville to Paris, at a high rate of speed, came into collision with a huge rock that sent it flying upward as it exploded, its passengers being scattered upon the flinty ground, the chauffeur meeting instant death, and Charley and Berry such terrible injuries that it was pronounced impossible for either to survive the shock.
The next day the news was in all the newspapers of England, France, and America, and in the roadside cottage to which the victims had been tenderly carried after the terrible accident, a broken-hearted father and two remorseful sisters bent over the unconscious forms in agonies of grief, the father crying: “Thank Heaven I forgave them!” The sisters, weeping bitterly: “Heaven forgive our cruelty that we did not!”
CHAPTER XXXVII.
A LATE REMORSE.
When the dreadful news was carried quickly to Paris, Lucile and Marie forgot all their pride and resentment and remembered only the love and pride they had once had in Charley, their beloved brother.
They set out quickly for the scene of the accident, accompanied by their father and husbands, and they took with them two of the most skillful physicians in the city, hoping they might render some service to the sufferers. When they reached the cottage they found the sufferers hovering between life and death.