“She has not yet finished dressing for dinner,” he thought, and rushed upstairs to make his own toilet for the eight-o’clock dinner. He hurried some, but he looked wondrously handsome when he came down again.
“No Camille yet!” he exclaimed, in wonder; and it was several minutes more before the queenly woman entered the room, elegantly attired as usual, her eyes glittering with excitement, her cheeks even more colorless than their usual wont.
CHAPTER XV.
“You are rather late,” the young man said, smilingly, as Camille came up to him for a caress.
“I had a new novel, and I was so interested in it that I could scarcely put it down to dress,” she replied, and just then the dinner-bell rang.
Norman gave his arm to his beautiful wife, and she went with him to the elegant dining-room, where they dined tête-à-tête, for the elder Mrs. de Vere had had her own meals served upstairs ever since she had been nursing the little invalid.
Never had Norman’s proud, beautiful wife been more charming than to-night. She was restless, brilliant, and more fond of her husband than she had ever seemed before. Her hazel eyes shot gleams of passion as they rested on the handsome face opposite her, and she seemed to realize more fully than ever the strength of her love for the husband who adored her, although he had had to bear so much at her capricious hands.
Despite her jealousy, despite her caprice, Camille adored her young husband; and as the thought of what had happened awhile ago rushed over her mind, and she realized how nearly she had lost him, she did not regret the terrible deed she had done. She rejoiced rather in the cleverness with which she had rid herself of her terrible foe.
Now and then, in the pauses of their talk, there came to her a thought of Robert Lacy, and she wondered if his dead body would ever be found. Would Lord Stuart ever know what had become of his servant? for such she had gathered from his words he was. She shuddered violently at thought of the danger she had been in at the hotel. Well, it was all over now. She was free—safe! The swirling river was swiftly bearing away all evidence of her ghastly crime. Oh, God! how cruelly she had hated the man whom she had sent to his death; yet she would not have had his death on her hands could she have helped it.
“But there was no other way.” She shuddered over and over as she lay sleepless by her beloved’s side through the long hours of the night, for the horror of bloodshed was upon her. She would never sleep sweetly again. She would wake trembling many a time with the sound of the river soughing in her ears, to live over in memory that scene beneath the cypress-trees; to see the dark, fiendish face of Robert Lacy; to feel him struggle in her arms as she struck the knife into his breast; to sicken as the hot blood spurted into her face and deluged her dress. She would remember always how much water it had taken to wash the stains away, and how guiltily she had stolen home in the twilight gloom, thankful for once that Finette was gone, and that she had no prying maid to take notice when she crept into her own room of the wet and draggled clothes she wore, and of the shivering fit that seized her as she fell on the floor, moaning faintly: