But she saw him, and fearful that she should be too late to arrest what she supposed to be the lovers' flight, she ran like the wind.
She neared the doorway—loud voices reached her ears, but whether in anger, or in supplication, or in sorrow, she could not distinguish.
Then came a sound that rooted her to the ground on which her flying foot was planted, in mute terror.
The round ringing report of a pistol-shot! and ere its echo had begun to die away, another!
No shriek, no wail, no word succeeded—all was as silent as the grave.
Then terror gave her courage, and she rushed madly forward a few steps, then stood on the threshold horror-stricken.
Both those young souls, but a few days before so happy, so beloved, and so loving, had taken their flight—whither?
Both lay there dead, as they had fallen, but unconvulsed, and graceful even in death. Neither had groaned or struggled, but as they had fallen, so they lay, a few feet asunder—her heart and his brain pierced by the deadly bullets, sped with the accuracy of his never-erring aim.
While she stood gazing, in the very stupor of dread, scarce conscious yet of what had fallen out, a deep voice smote her ear.
"Base, base girl, this is all your doing!" Then, as if wakening from a trance, she uttered a long, piercing shriek, darted into the pavilion between the gory corpses, and flung herself headlong out of the open window into the pool beneath.