Mr. Arnold's body was carried to his winter residence in New York, and buried from thence with all the pomp and splendor due to his wealth and station. Felise and her mother, of course, accompanied the remains.
The housekeeper at the seaside home was left in charge of the hapless Bonnibel, who lay sick unto death in her luxurious chamber, tended carefully by hirelings and strangers, but with never one kiss of love to fall on her fevered brow in sympathy and tenderness.
Love had gone out of her life. With the young husband adrift now on the wide sea, and the kindly uncle lying in his gory grave, love had gone away from her.
She had no kindred now from whom to claim tenderness or care, so only hirelings were left to watch the spark of life flickering so feebly day by day, that it seemed as if it must surely go out in darkness. They were all who heard the wild, passionate appeals for Leslie and Uncle Francis that were always on the sufferer's lips as she babbled incoherently in her wild delirium.
Mrs. Arnold and Felise remained in New York for several weeks, attending to business affairs and superintending the making up of very fashionable and cumbrous mourning.
Mrs. Arnold did not provide any of this raiment for Bonnibel. She sincerely hoped that the girl would die of her fever and preclude the necessity of so doing.
But youth is very tenacious of life. Bonnibel, in her illness and desolation, would willingly have died to please her aunt, but destiny had decreed otherwise.
There came a cool, still night in September when the nurses hung carefully around the bed waiting for the crisis that the doctor had said would come at midnight. It came, and the reaper, Death, with his sickle keen, passed by on the other side.
In the meanwhile outraged justice was on the qui vive for the escaped homicide, Leslie Dane. It was rumored that he had sought refuge in a foreign land, but nothing definite could be learned regarding his mysterious whereabouts.