But were they eyes of love that gleamed on him now, lying so pale and still and sad, with his thoughts upon his beautiful young love?
Alas! a gleam of tigerish hate shone in those steel-blue orbs as they watched the young man; and when at last the fringed lashes drooped against his cheek, a faint sigh of relief escaped the lips of the impatient watcher. For hours and hours she had been waiting there; but it seemed as if he did not mean to retire to-night. Now he had fallen into a light doze. Perhaps he would sleep there all night.
Oh, Ralph Chainey, wake! From the curtained darkness beyond a fiend is gliding toward you!
The shrouding hood of the long cloak has fallen back from the face of a woman—a bold, handsome face with steel-blue eyes, and glittering golden hair. In her upraised hand glitters a long thin dagger, on her face is stamped in awful, ashen pallor the fell purpose—murder!
But he sleeps on lightly, dreaming, perhaps, of Kathleen, while this beautiful fury glides soundlessly across the thick moquette carpet, gains his side, poises her shining weapon on high, aims for his heart, and—it descends, it pierces his breast!
Ralph Chainey was sleeping but lightly, and as the cold steel entered his breast a shudder ran over his whole frame, the dew of pain started on his brow, and with a shriek of mortal agony he staggered to his feet, clutching blindly at the midnight assailant.
She had not counted on this; she thought her frenzied blow would be short, sharp, and decisive, that she would have time to fly from the scene of her terrible crime.
She was mistaken. His outstretched arms caught and held her with the momentary fierce strength of a dying man; his blood spurted out in hot streams upon her face and hands.
And meanwhile his shriek of agony had aroused the house. Earl Chainey, his brother, started wildly from his dreams, and his wife, affrighted at that awful sound, buried her pale face in the pillows. Mrs. Chainey, lying awake and restless, brooding over her son's departure, recognized Ralph's voice in an instant, and, with a terrible foreboding of evil, sprung forward to his rescue.
Upon the threshold of the door they met—the mother and her elder son. Earl flung the door wide, and together they sprung into the room.