St. Leon looked down into the beautiful face that was so maddeningly fair in the soft light, and his heart swelled with a great despair. To think that she had once been his, that that peerless form had rested in his arms, that sweet face slept upon his breast! And now—divided by a woman's pride, they were as widely severed as if Jean Ingelow's "vast, calm river, so dread to see," rolled its rushing waves between their hearts.
Standing thus, arm in arm, each heart busy with its deep emotions, neither heard the furtive steps creeping slowly up behind them, neither saw the cruel, jealous face with its wild eyes glaring upon them, neither saw the gleam of the slender dagger clutched in the murderous hand, neither dreamed of the man who lurked behind them, nor of the woman who followed at a safe distance, eager to sate her vengeance in the sight of her rival's heart's blood.
"Mrs. Lynn, you are angry with me because I am here," said St. Leon, half-questioningly.
"No," she answered, without removing her eyes from the moon-gilded waves that broke at her feet in snowy surf. She felt too weak to meet the mute pleading of those eyes she loved so madly.
"You think that I have followed you here," he went on, sadly. "But you are wrong. Much as I might have wished to do so, dear as your presence is to me, I could never—"
The deprecating words were never finished. A terrible form flashed suddenly before them, a terrible face gleamed in the light dagger flashed upward in the air, and a voice, hoarse with misery and madness, rang out fiercely:
"Die, Laurel Vane—die!"
The dagger glittered against her snowy breast, the hand of the frenzied madman would have driven it swiftly home but all in an instant she was caught away, and the descending blade was sheathed in another breast—the broad breast of St. Leon Le Roy. The arms that had closed wildly around Laurel for a moment fell away from her, and he dropped on the sands at her feet, the hot blood spurting from his heart, and deepening the rosy hem of her satin robe to a horrible crimson, while her agonized cry rent the summer night: "Oh, St. Leon, you have died for me!"