Snatched from her profound slumber and unobserved, Romaine Effingham had struggled up to a sitting posture and straightway fallen back with the cry which had startled the silence.
"Oh, why will you torture me?" she moaned piteously, flinging her arms across her face as if in desperate effort to shut out the sight of some uncanny apparition; "take him—take him away and let me—rest! In mercy, let me rest!"
"Romaine! Great heaven! what does this mean?"
"Silence!" commanded Morton, releasing his hold and retreating a step, while a gleam of triumph flickered for one brief moment in his sunken eyes; "Mr. Drummond, if you have any respect for the life of Miss Effingham, you will instantly leave this room!"
"Her life?" echoed Drummond in suspense, "it appears to me rather as if her reason were in jeopardy!"
"You are right," came the firm response, "her reason is gone—she is mad!"
CHAPTER V.
"She is abused, stolen from me, and corrupted by spells and medicines bought of mountebanks."
"A day in April never came so sweet to show how costly summer was at hand," may be quoted as applicable to the rare dawn that succeeded that night of mystic import at Belvoir. The whole world seemed instinct with the smile of jocund spring. The dreary night had wept itself away, leaving its tears to jewel each new-born blade of grass. High up upon the spacious lawn crocuses fluttered their imperial raiment while snowdrops nodded and shook their bells as the bland wind swept by. The brook, swollen to a ruffled sea that inundated the low-land meadows, swirled through the willow-copse plumed to its crest with golden down in token of its glad revival. The trees stretched forth their yearning arms green with enamel of new buds; and over all the sun, rejoicing in release, shot his bright lances into nook and dell where lurked the mists of yesterday.
Yet, despite the allurements of the outer world, the inmates of Belvoir House remained invisible, and the stately white columns were left to mount guard over their sharply defined shadows along the sunny piazza.