While these reflections were whirling through her maddened brain, the fatal poison was coursing serpent-like through Otto's veins, and creeping to his head. For a time he lay still; then he began to move uneasily in his pillows, his breathing became laboured, he beat the covers with his hands. Then he moaned, as in the last agony, and Stephania, to whom every sound of suffering from his lips was as a thousand deaths, knelt by his side, unable to avert her gaze from the youth, dying by the hand he loved and trusted.
Fixedly she stared at the inert form on the bed. Then only the full realization of her deed seemed to burst upon her brain. She clutched despairingly at the cover, beneath which lay his restless form, his face averted, the face she so loved, yet feared, to see.
"Otto!" she moaned, "Otto!"
Her voice broke. She suddenly withdrew her hands and looked at them in horror, those white, beautiful hands, that had mixed the fatal draught. Then with a bewildered, vacant smile she beamed on her victim.
Otto had lost consciousness. Nothing stirred in the chamber. Profound silence reigned unbroken, save for the slow chime of a distant bell, tolling the hour.
Was he dead? Had the light of the eyes, she loved so well, gone out for ever?
Her hand hovered fearfully above him, as if to drive away the grim spectre of death. At last, nerving herself with a supreme effort, she touched with trembling hand the cover that hid him from view. Lifting it tearfully, she turned it back softly,—softly, murmuring his name all the time.
Then she stooped down close, and closer yet. Her red lips touched the purple ones; she stroked the damp and clammy brow, and thrust her fingers into his soft hair. A moan came from his lips. Then, fastening her white robe more securely about her, and stepping heedfully on tip-toe, she passed out of the chamber. With uncertain step she glided along the corridor, a ghostly figure, with a white, spectral face and fevered eyes. At the foot of the spiral stairway she paused, gazing eagerly around.
Stepping to a low casement she peered into the night. Flickering lights and shadows played without; the late moon had disappeared, leaving but a silvery trail upon the sky, to faintly mark her recent passage among the stars. Everything was still. Only the plaintive cry of an owl echoed from afar. Her sandalled feet sounded on the stone-paved floor, like the soft pattering of falling leaves in autumn. Unsteadily she moved along the gray discoloured wall towards the secret panel, known but to herself. Soon her perplexed wandering gaze found what it sought, and Stephania disappeared, as if the stones had receded to receive her.
CHAPTER IV