CHAPTER XXIV.
BY F. ANSTEY.
“WHOM THE GODS HATE DIE HARD.”
It seemed that the doctor was right after all; Frank Onslow was feeling better, distinctly, undeniably better, as he lay on the chintz couch in the little sitting room of the rose-hung cottage at Guernsey. The pain about the region of the heart had entirely disappeared under skilled medical treatment; not for many a day had he felt more vigorous and hopeful, reclining there with his eyes fixed upon the door in momentary expectation that it would open and admit the slight girlish form of the wife from whom he had been so long and cruelly separated. Yes, Fenella was on her way to him, he would see her, hold her in his arms! There might be years of happiness yet in store for them—in which to atone, to forget. Surely the boat must have arrived by this time! What was that sound? He had not deceived himself; there was a light step on the gravel outside. She had come, she was here, in another instant she would be at his side! The door was gently opened, he rose to his feet with a smothered cry of joy, rose—and the next instant sat down again heavily, with a groan of irrepressible disappointment. For the woman who stood there, dazzling yet in her faded southern beauty, was not Fenella; it was Lucille de Vigny, whom, as he fondly imagined, he had last beheld drowning in the blue-green waves, clasped in the fierce embrace of her injured and revengeful husband, the blade of whose dagger was deeply embedded in her bosom.
The shock of the surprise was considerable; it was some time before he could recover sufficiently to express himself in appropriate terms.
“Witch, demoness, arch-fiend that you are!” he groaned, “how came you here? Has the sea given you up once more?”
“Ah, Frank!” she said, with a soft musical accent of reproach, “I did not expect that question (to say nothing of the form in which it was put) from you of all men. Who should know how I escaped what seemed a well-nigh inevitable doom, if not the man who preserved my life?”
“I—I preserve your life?” gasped Onslow, in a bewilderment which, under the circumstances, was not unnatural.
“You forgot soon, sooner than I. I can see the whole scene yet; my horrible husband holding me closer, closer still; the steely glitter of the blade as it touched my breast; you on the rock thirty feet above, gazing with eyes that are fixed—oh, but fixed! [she closed her own as she spoke, with a flicker like the instantaneous shutter of a camera] and next, without warning, with a sudden bound you leapt the distance between us, hurled, with a strength that in your shattered state seemed almost supernatural, my would-be executioner into the sea with one hand, while you supported my half-fainting form with the other, and then strode away up the cliff like one in a dream. Surely you remember?”
Frank shook his head; he had no recollection whatever of the incident. That this should be so will not surprise the reader, who is already aware that he was subject, under certain mental conditions, to hypnotic trances. In one of them he had, as we know, destroyed a life; in another he had preserved one—with an equal lack of volition of consciousness in either case. Even now he could not bring himself to credit her account, any more than he could affect a decent degree of satisfaction at so untimely a resuscitation.
Still, there she stood, alive—whoever had rescued her; and it occurred to him presently that he might at least profit by the fact to obtain some light upon a point which had cost him several anxious thoughts of late. Had she, or had she not, written that mysterious letter from Pearson’s Row? If she had, could she indeed prove that Fenella was guiltless of Count de Mürger’s blood?
Despite his intrinsic loyalty to his wife, he could not help preferring that her fair little hand should be unstained even by a justifiable homicide. It was weakness, no doubt, but man is built up of prejudices which can neither be defended nor overcome.