"I can bear it no longer," she murmured, as she paced the floor late one night, thinking over her troubles until her brain seemed on fire. "I will write to Colonel Carlyle and tell him the truth—tell him that dreadful secret—that I am not his wife, that I belong to another! Surely he must let me go free then. He will hate me that I have brought such shame upon him; but he will keep the secret for his own sake, and let me go away and hide myself somewhere in the great dark world until I die."
She dropped upon her knees and lifted her clasped hands to heaven, while bitter tears rained over her pallid cheeks.
"Heaven help me!" she moaned; "it is hard, hard! If I only had not married Colonel Carlyle all might have gone well. Oh, Leslie, Leslie, I loved you so! God help me, I love you still! Yet I shall never see you again, although I am your wife! Ah, never, never, for a gulf lies between us—a gulf of sin, though Heaven is my witness I am innocent of all intentional wrong-doing. I would have died first!"
Her words died away in a moan of pain; but presently the anguished young voice rose again:
"The sibyl's fateful prophecy has all been fulfilled. Yet how little I dreamed that it could come true! Oh, God, how is it that I, the proud daughter of the Veres and the Arnolds, can live with the shadow of disgrace upon my head?"
She dropped her face in her hands, and the "silence of life, more pathetic than death," filled the room. All was strangely still; nothing was heard but the murmurous waves of the beautiful Bay of Naples softly lapping the shore. Suddenly a slight, strange sound echoed through the room. Bonnibel sprang to her feet, a little startled, and listened in alarm. Again the sound was repeated. It seemed to Bonnibel as if someone had thrown a few pebbles against the window. Yes, it must be that, she was sure.
[CHAPTER XXXVI.]
Full of vague alarm, blent with a little trembling hope of she knew not what, Bonnibel ran to the window, which was fortunately not fastened down, pushed up the sash and peered down into the night. The moon had not fully risen yet, and there was but a faint light in the clear sky, but down in the dark shrubbery below she fancied she could see a human form and a white face upturned to the window.