Like a bolt of lightning from a summer sky came that terrible hour into the hitherto calm existence of Eva Somerville—an hour that was destined to change the whole current of her life, as a little rippling brook, singing along in sunshine and shadow, between green, flowery banks, suddenly empties into a wide, tumultuous torrent, rushing on with irresistible force and thunderous noise to some mighty falls.
Little Eva, half dazed by the strangeness of the night’s events, and horrified by her cousin’s sudden entrance and frenzied accusations against her honor, had crouched down among her pillows in an agony of alarm, unable to utter a word in self-defense until the two men clashed in mortal combat, and the crash of the discharged revolver, filling the room with blue smoke, assured her that murder was being done.
Instantly, and with a moan of despair, she comprehended Terry’s fatal mistake that had driven him into murderous frenzy.
He believed that Doctor Ludington was her clandestine lover. For, how else could he ever have chanced to be there in her room at midnight, alone with her, a trespasser; a Ludington, a member of that family—sworn foes to the Groves’ clan for over thirty years, maintaining a smoldering vendetta after the deplorable fashion of some West Virginia and Kentucky sections, a survival of the savage spirit of their feudal ancestry.
Jealous rage fired Terry’s heart also, for Eva, even as a child, had felt for him a subtle aversion she could never overcome, and that was only increased in the past year by some lover-like advances he had imprudently made.
“Poor Terry, how strange the instinct that draws him to me, while I, in my turn, recoil from him. He is not such a bad fellow, truly,” she had thought more than once, in girlish pity.
But he appeared to her in the light of a fiend now, as the scathing words of his denunciation burned her cheeks with shame.
Now she comprehended her mysterious aversion to him always; a premonition of the evil he was destined to bring into her life.
And he was murdering Doctor Ludington in cold blood; a man who had never harmed him, who, although led into the house by a hideous practical joke, had dared its dangers on an errand of mercy.
He was the enemy of her house, but somehow she could not forget the tenderness of his dark-blue eyes and the wistful pleading of his musical voice as he said: