At his hasty explanation some ran in search of the murderess, some remained to help him carry Camille into the house, but after a brief examination Dr. Hinton decided that it could not be done.
“She has but a few minutes to live,” he said; and Thea, who was gazing, half fainting, on the dreadful sight, suddenly fell down upon her knees. It seemed to her too dreadful for Camille to die thus with her proud head low in the dust which her dainty feet had spurned in happier days. She slipped her fair arm gently under the fallen head, and while she was trying to whisper a prayer for the dying, Camille’s soul went away in one long, sighing groan to its judgment.
Her cruel murderess succeeded in getting away safely with her booty, and for a few years led a life of dissolute splendor in her beloved Paris, but at length she was seen and recognized by one who had known her in former days, and she was immediately arrested for poisoning her husband just before she had entered the service of Camille Acton, or Lacy, as her real name was. The woman’s guilt was so clearly proven that she suffered capital punishment for the murder of her husband, and so Camille’s dreadful death was well avenged.
When Norman de Vere, at Verelands, read the story of her punishment, his feet strayed to a nameless grave in the churchyard which his dear old mother, in the kindness of her heart, often adorned with flowers, and with his eyes on the low, green mound, he whispered:
“Poor Camille! your death is at least avenged. May Heaven rest your soul!”
Verelands was never a very happy place to them after the white gravel before the door had soaked up Camille’s life-blood. Even Norman’s mother was glad to forsake it for some years after Camille was buried, and to go abroad with the rest to Lord Stuart’s beautiful English estate, where it seemed only right and proper that the De Veres should spend half their time at least, since their eldest son, the noble little Alan Arthur, must some day reign there in his uncle’s stead, a noble lord, who inherited a noble soul from his father, as well as beauty and high estate from his sweet mother our Little Sweetheart.
THE END.
Jesse James, My Father
By Jesse James, Jr.