“There is the man you seek,” cried Lucille, pointing to Frank, who stood quietly awaiting his captors in the center of the room. “Ah, my poor Doggie, you have had your day!”
“Begging your pardon, madame,” said one of the men, not uncivilly, slipping the handcuffs over Lucille’s slender wrists, “but you’re the party we’re after. You have given us the slip often enough, but I think we’ve got you safe this time.”
Mme. de Vigny’s face changed; for an instant she seemed to contemplate resistance, and then she submitted to the inevitable, and followed her captors to the door. On the threshold she paused and looked back with a gaze of concentrated hate upon the party. “Bah!” she ejaculated, and then, with an indescribable gesture of defiant contempt, she walked out of the room, and out of the lives her baleful influence had done so much to perturb.
As soon as she was gone, Frank, with a sudden recollection, inquired, “And the boy, our Ronny, Fenella? He is not ill—not again? Tell me the worst. I—I can bear it!”
“Ronny,” said Fenella, with one of her little spasms of silent mirth, “Ronny is quite well; only he insisted in driving up to the door in a goat chaise. What is the matter, Frank—you are not unwell?”
“No,” said Frank faintly, “no, only the dread of some new disaster. We have gone through so many!”
“They are all over now,” she said, sweetly and confidently, “all over. Ronny will be here soon, and then we three will live here happily together, and poor Mr. Jacynth, whose time I am afraid I have really monopolized quite shamefully, can go back to his chambers and his clients again.”
“Yes,” said Jacynth dully. “I can go back. I—I have neglected them too long.”
It was the end, he realized; she needed him no longer. He should see her no more—he would go. But before he could carry out his intention, he was startled by a sudden change in Onslow’s expression and, shocked beyond words, he saw him throw his arms above his head, turn sharply round three times, and totter heavily against a wire flower stand, full of hyacinths in bloom, which he brought down with him in his fall. It was all over! The long-standing heart trouble, combined with the excitement of the varied events of the past months, and especially of the last hour, had brought poor Frank Onslow’s checkered career to a sudden and tragic close, and the form that lay there among the bared bulbs, crushed bells, scattered earth, and broken pots of the hyacinths was already itself nothing but lifeless clay.
Fenella felt too much for tears; she stood there in a kind of stupor, wondering what had happened to her, and how it would affect her when she was able to think of it. It was Jacynth who, with his never-failing tact and consideration, came to her relief.