But what struck me most was the expression of their faces,—such wild, sad, longing, entreating love! As they disappeared around a corner of the cliff which jutted out, a dreadful suspicion seized me. Could they be seeking self-destruction? Were they going to bury their unhallowed love, with its shame and sorrow, in one wildering embrace beneath those surging ocean-waves?
As one in a dream, I moved along the beach, hardly knowing whither I went. Mechanically I ascended the flight of steps which led to the part of the cliff directly opposite the hotel entrance. As I walked up the lawn, I noticed a great commotion in the house. There were lights flitting about, people running up and down stairs, and many persons talking confusedly on the gallery and in the hall.
"What is the matter?" I asked of a waiter who was passing near me, looking frightened and bewildered.
He stopped, and answered with all the keen eagerness of an untrained person, to whom the communicating of a startling story to an uninformed superior is a perfect godsend.
"Very strange doings, Ma'am,—very strange!"
"Aha!" I thought; "they have discovered the absence or flight of those unhappy creatures."
"Very strange doings!" he repeated. "The foreign lady who sang to-night, and the gentleman too, is both dead."
"Dead!" I exclaimed. "Why, you are mistaken. I saw them just this instant on the sands below the cliff."
The man looked at me as if he thought me crazy.
"I mean the singers, Ma'am,—them as sang at the concert to-night. They was both taken nigh about the same time, was handled just alike, and died here a little while ago, a'most at once, as you might say. Folks is talking hard about the husband of the Madame."