"I was born to be the avenger of my parents' wrongs," Lady Vera answers, proudly. "And though it kill me, I have kept my oath of vengeance!"
The wind moans ominously around the creaking gables, the thunder mutters hoarsely, the blue flame of the lightning casts its ghastly glare into the room. No one heeds the fierce war of the elements in the fiercer war of human passions raging within the gloomy chamber.
"Yes, you have kept your oath, curse you, curse you!" Marcia Cleveland answers, venomously. "You have dragged me and mine down to poverty, to shame, to madness! But live, Vera Campbell, live yet a little longer, and you shall see your weapons turned against yourself. You will be thrust from your splendid home and high estate, branded, disgraced, while I shall reign in your stead! But the sweetness will be taken from my revenge. You have driven my daughter, the light of my eyes and heart, mad, mad! It is a wound that naught on earth can heal. Oh, curse you, curse you! May you never know one hour of peace! May you be racked by every ill that flesh is heir to! May God's——"
The terrible curse she is invoking stays forever on her lips! A blinding flash of forked and vivid blue lightning shatters the window panes, rends the curtains, and darts into the room like a living sword. A peal of awful thunder seems to rend the earth in twain, and the old house rocks for a moment like an infant's cradle. Then the rain rushes wildly again, and the thunder subsides into ominous mutterings and long, rolling sounds of terrible wrath, and Marcia Cleveland lies prone upon the floor, her distorted face upturned to the light, a single blue spot on her temple telling its awful story to the shocked beholders—slain by the lightning!
"Oh, my poor, young mistress, you are dead, too! We shall all be killed!" Mrs. Robson exclaims in an access of mortal terror, for Lady Vera, overcome by the horrors of that dreadful night has fallen back in a deathly swoon upon her pillow.
At that cry of grief the two who have lingered at the door spring into the room. Mr. Sharpe, the detective, and Colonel Lockhart.
It is Mr. Sharpe who recoils from the sight of the two dead bodies, and the still sadder sight of the living madwoman, crooning her senseless songs, and counting her jewels in a distant corner.
Colonel Lockhart has no eyes for these. At one bound he is by the bedside where the missing countess lies cold and white and still in all her beauty.
"Oh, Vera, my love, my darling, have I found you only for this?" he groans, taking the slight form into his arms, pressing it to his aching heart, and lavishing passionate kisses on the cold, white lips.
But as if his love had power to call her back to life, Lady Vera sighs faintly and opens her eyes, heavily at first then with a flash of wondrous brightness in them as she recognizes her lover.