Vivien went up to him and said, gently:
“My dear friend, I beg that you will be calm. Miss Dupont had fainted when we came for you, and it would unnerve her again to see you thus moved, if she should be recovered.”
“Thanks, my sweet sister, for your kindly warning; I will be calm, but I beg you will not keep me longer here.”
He dashed through the entrance of the room as he spoke, in direct contradiction of his previous assertion that he would be calm; but he soon stopped and waited for Vivien to come up with him, for he did not know one step of the way through those intricate passages.
At last they entered the spacious room.
Wholly unmindful of the conquered chief, who gazed at him with black and threatening looks, passing over with one swift glance of his eye every inmate of the place, until his gaze fell upon the group at the altar, when with one bound and a wild cry of joy, Robert sprang to Dora’s side, and seizing her in his arms, pressed kiss after kiss upon her cold lips, while he murmured tenderest words of endearment in her dull ears.
As if in answer to his beseeching eyes, and the earnest, touching appeals which fell from his lips, she revived there in his arms.
A faint tinge of color crept into the death-white lips, the heavy eyelids fluttered, unclosed, and closed again, then flew wide open, revealing the blue orbs beneath, which fixed their astonished gaze full upon the loving, tender face bending above her.
A smile of rapture overspread her features, and nestling closer in his arms, she murmured:
“Oh, Robbie, am I dead—and is this heaven? When did you die? I thought you did not love me, but you do!”