[CHAPTER XIII.]
"The ball that entered Olney Winthrop's heart was fired by the hand of Leith Pierrepont!"
Over and over again, like the insistent surge of the waves, or the maddening repetition of some wild, fantastic melody, those words kept repeating themselves in Carlita's reeling brain.
She had crept away noiselessly when she had heard them spoken, crept away and almost crawled up the stairs to her own chamber, where the gathering darkness lay in somber shadows. She closed the door and turned the key, leaning against it in a weak, half-relieved sort of way, like the criminal who has gained a moment of respite from his too close pursuers.
But the haunting memory of those ghastly words aroused her again, and she pressed her hands upon her breast, her great eyes peering into the gloomy shadows, the words she had heard standing out before her in letters of glaring fire.
"It can't be—it can't be!" she panted, leaning forward as if she were speaking her passionate cry into some listening ear. "It can't be! Olney Winthrop murdered, and—Leith Pierrepont his—No, no, no! It can not be true! My God! I will not believe it! There is some awful mistake! Some hideous blunder! But then—but then—"
She paused and moistened her stiff lips, her eyes opening and closing curiously. She did not continue that monologue, but catching hold of a chair, then the foot of the bed, a table, then another chair, she dragged herself to the fireside, which had burned itself to little more than dull gray ashes.