"A little after midnight they returned home. She went to bed and fell asleep, the lights still burning in the house. Just as the first faint streaks of dawn began to appear in the eastern sky, she awoke with a cold chill creeping over her. Some instinct warned her that evil had occurred.
"She rose and sought her husband. She found him in his private room, lying on the floor, stone dead, with a revolver still grasped in one cold hand. He had spent the night arranging his affairs. He had left her many tender messages, which told of his love for her and his children, and tender kisses for the dear ones whose lips he dared not press himself.
"That interview with his family physician had betrayed the secret to him. Leprosy, which had occurred among his ancestors generations before, had declared itself in him, and he had taken the shortest way of doctoring it."
[CHAPTER XXXVI.]
"ALL'S WELL."
There was silence in the room when Doctor Darrow finished his story—silence broken at length by Serena's cold, harsh voice.
"But that does not prove that Beatrix is exempt from the curse entailed upon her," she said, coarsely. "I consider her unfit to associate with other people until the exact truth is proved, and I decline to receive her here in my house. I will not expose myself and others to possible contagion. And, besides, the very thought of having such a horror under one's roof is not agreeable, I can tell you. I think, Doctor Darrow, that you, as a physician, would be better employed with something else, than in trying to impose a case like this upon Mr. Dane and myself!"
Doctor Darrow colored.