A terrible groan was Violet’s only reply, and Lena continued, eagerly:
“Oh, lady, you will not surely refuse my prayer, for I have sworn to bring home justice to my father’s slayer! And you are the only one who can help me! Oh, when I heard you taunting him to-night my soul rejoiced, for I knew that now I was near to my revenge—that Heaven itself had sent you to my aid.”
“Oh, this is dreadful, dreadful!” sobbed Violet. “Hush, Miss Lavarre; let me explain.”
“Oh, for sweet pity’s sake do not refuse me!” wept Lena Lavarre, wildly.
“But, my poor, unhappy girl, you do not understand my position. He has married me, that fiend, to keep me silent, because no wife can testify against her husband. Do you not know that this is the law?” explained Violet, her heart racked with pity for the wronged girl, and stung with remorse for the silence she had kept too long, and which now could never be broken.
The rage and despair of poor Lena Lavarre were beyond description.
She paced up and down the beautiful apartment, raving in excitement and breathing maledictions on her destroyer and the murderer of her father. Her beautiful brown eyes, once so soft and tender with the light of love, now glared wildly, almost insanely, and she seemed to forget Violet entirely until she crept timidly to her side, and whispered:
“Is it not time for us to go if we hope to escape our enemy?”
“Yes, oh, yes—I was forgetting everything in my passion! Come, lady,” cried Lena, catching the girl’s hand and drawing her softly forward to the hall, “you must go as noiselessly as a cat,” she continued, as they stole along the corridors and down the stairs to a little side entrance.
“I have found a key to this door,” whispered Lena. “The master did not trust me very much, although I expatiated loudly on my fidelity. But, all the same, he locked us all into the house before he left. But I had this key ready before he arrived with his bride to-night, for I meant you to escape. I did not trust his story of a crazy wife who would swear that she had been carried off against her will. Step softly, dear, lest Monsieur Cook catch our footsteps as he dozes in the kitchen. There!” and with a sigh of relief, she pushed the fugitive bride out before her into the moonlighted garden.