All stood aghast at her fierce words, uttered with all the eloquence and vehemence of real passion, but none so much as Rose, who had never beheld her other than the gentlest of the gentle. Now she wore the expression, and spoke with the tone of a young Pythoness, full of the fury of the god.
She sprung forward as she uttered the last words, extricating herself from the slight hold of the astonished officers, and rushed toward her cowed and craven husband.
"But in all things, mean wretch," she continued, in tones of fiery scorn, "in all things thou art frustrate—thy vengeance is naught, thy vile ambition naught, thyself and thy king, fools, knaves, and frustrate equally. And now," she added, snatching the dagger which Raoul had given her from the scabbard, "now die, infamous, accursed pandar!" and with the word she buried the keen weapon at one quick and steady stroke to the very hilt in his base and brutal heart.
Then, ere the corpse had fallen to the earth, or one hand of all those that were stretched out to seize her had touched her person, she smote herself mortally with the same reeking weapon, and only crying out in a clear, high voice, "Bear witness, Rose, bear witness to my honor! Bear witness all that I die spotless!" fell down beside the body of her husband, and expired without a struggle or a groan.
Awfully was she tried, and awfully she died. Rest to her soul if it be possible.
The caitiff Marquis de Ploermel perished, as she had said, in all things frustrated; for though his vengeance was in very deed complete, he believed that it had failed, and in his very agony that failure was his latest and his worst regret.
On the morrow, when St. Renan returned not to his home, the page gave the alarm, and the fatal wall was torn down, but too late.
The gallant victim of love's honor was no more. Doomed to a lingering death he had died speedily, though by no act of his own. A blood-vessel had burst within, through the violence of his own emotions. Ignorant of the fate of his sweet Melanie, he had died, as he had lived, the very soul of honor; and when they buried him, in the old chapel of his Breton castle, beside his famous ancestors, none nobler lay around him; and the brief epitaph they carved upon his stone was true, at least, if it were short and simple, for it ran only thus—
