[CHAPTER XVII.]
Breathless, with alternate flashes of heat and cold traveling over her with such rapidity that unconsciousness was threatened, Carlita sat there staring at the words represented by the numbers in that telegram, understanding all the horrible import of it, yet unable to think connectedly after the first shock, until finally she flung up her hands and covered her wretched face passionately.
"Why should it affect me like this?" she cried, as if some awful hatred of herself were at work in her heart. "Why should it affect me like this? I knew that Leith Pierrepont was guilty of murder—knew it as well before as I know it now—and yet—and yet hope must have been at work within me, for this additional proof of his guilt is maddening. Why should he lie, if it were not he that committed the crime? Why should he wish to deceive me as to the manner of Olney's death? Good God! it seems impossible that a human creature, one of Thine own creation, could be so base; and yet it must be so—it must be so!"
And yet, for all her self-assurance, she snatched up the book again and once more toiled through the numbers, counting them out more slowly, more carefully, than she had done before, and feeling the hideous depression creeping over her with renewed horror as she realized that she had made no mistake.
And then, trembling so that she could scarcely hold the volume, she compiled a telegram to Edmond Stolliker in reply:
"I don't understand your message. Have you had body disinterred, and what does the knowledge imply? Answer at once if you have reason still to believe the man whom we suspect to be guilty."
She felt better when it had been dispatched by Ahbel, with the injunction to the telegraph operator to be sure there should be no mistake made in the numbers; still she could not rest, but walked up and down the room, up and down, like the tigress that chafes against confining bars.