"And I tell you they are dead!" she answers, hoarsely. "If you will not believe me, go to Glenwood. You know our family burial-plot. There you will find two new-made graves. Ask the sexton whose they are, and he will tell you Mrs. Campbell's and her daughter Vera's. Your wife died three nights ago—died of a broken heart, while I, her sister who hated her, was dancing at a ball! Your daughter, Vera, died the night before last by her own hand—died the death of the suicide! Ha, ha!" she laughed, sneeringly, "have I not had a glorious revenge for my slighted love?"
"I will not believe you—I cannot. It is too terrible," Lawrence Campbell moans, with his hands pressed to his head, and a dazed look in his great, black eyes.
"You may, for it is true," exclaims Ivy, coming forward into the light, with a wicked triumph in her pale-blue eyes. "If you will not believe my mother, go to the graveyard and see, as she bade you."
He lifts his eyes and stares at her a moment, a white, dizzy horror on his face. The next moment he reels forward blindly, like some slaughtered thing, and falls in a white and senseless heap upon the floor.
"You have killed him, too, mamma," Ivy exclaims, exultantly.
The heartless woman, turning around, spurns the fallen body with her foot.
"A fit ending to the tragedy," she utters, cruelly. "Ring the bell for a servant, Ivy."
In a moment a white-aproned menial appears in the room. Mrs. Cleveland looks at him frowningly.
"John, who admitted this drunken fellow into the house?" she inquires, sharply.
"I did, madam. He said he was an old friend of yours," the man answers respectfully. "Is anything wrong about it, madam? He seems," bending over him, "to be dead."