CHAPTER LXIV
"You have died for me!" the stricken wife repeated, and then, overcome with horror, she knelt down beside the dead man, and with her arms about him, and her head upon his breast, she relapsed into unconsciousness almost as deep as death.
Ross Powell stood still a moment, like one frozen with horror. That maddened cry from the lips of the woman he would have slain rang fearfully in his ears, he realized in a moment to what fearful lengths he had been driven by his own jealous passion and the specious temptations of Mrs. Merivale. He had slain his hated rival, but he had brought down retribution on his own head, for Laurel's wild shriek of despair had echoed loudly back to the hotel, and already a score of people were rushing to the scene. Startled, terrified, the murderer made a wild rush forward, still clutching in his hand the bloody dagger, but before he had run a dozen paces he was brought to a stop by the sudden apparition of a white-faced woman who flung herself wildly before him, hissing out, in tones of blended wrath and horror, a terrible malediction upon his head:
"Murderer! you have slain him! How dare you, how dare you? May Heaven's curses light upon your head! May you swing from the hangman's rope! May perdition seize your soul!"
She must have been mad, for she flung herself before him, she barred his way, she clung to him with her desperate white arms, heedless of his curses and remonstrances, terribly intent on delivering him up to justice, and so punishing him for the mad mistake he had made in slaying the husband and sparing the wife!
She must have been mad, or she would have known that he would not tamely submit to detention with the feet of the avengers gaining swiftly on his track, and his soul writhing in horror of the hangman's ghastly rope. He tried to thrust her from him, to tear away from the arms that held him in desperate bondage; he shouted hoarsely for her to let him go.
"Devil in woman's shape, it was you that tempted me!" he cried out, with a fierce, blood-curling oath. "Now let me go, or I swear I will kill you as I did him!"
She must have been mad, for she did not heed the threat—she only clung tighter in spite of his frantic struggles to release himself from the arms that twined around him venomously, like living serpents in the deadly embrace of hate.
"I will never let you go—never!" she hissed out, madly, and in his frantic fear, hearing the steps of his pursuers coming nearer and nearer on his trail, he lifted the cruel dagger, still reeking with Le Roy's life-blood, and plunged it fiercely in her breast as it gleamed bare and white in the beautiful moonlight.
"Ah!" she gasped, and the white arms relaxed their hold, her body wavered and fell limply forward. He thrust it desperately from him, and sprung forward—free!
Free! but at what terrible cost to his soul. The woman whose low, soft whisperings had tempted him to murder, the woman who in her madness would fain have delivered him up to the law's vengeance, lay dead upon the shore, the cold, white moonlight shining down into her ghastly, staring eyes and pallid face. Retribution had overtaken her, and the fate she had plotted for another recoiled upon her own head. The serpent she had loosed to destroy another struck its deadly fangs into her own heart.
They lifted her up tenderly and pitifully and bore her back to the hotel. They spoke of her with the gentlest pity and regret as the victim of a cruel murder, for no one ever knew the truth—no one guessed that she was to blame for the tragedy that had ended her life in so disastrous a fashion. The shadow of her sin never rested on her grave, for there was no one to betray her—Ross Powell was never apprehended. His deadly fear lent wings to his feet, and he escaped from his pursuers and made good his flight to a far-off land. He never returned to his native shore, he was never brought to justice. All his punishment came to him through his own cowardly conscience. The cruel whip-lash of remorse followed him through the world. The double murder he had committed lay like a mountain's weight upon his soul. He had been bad and wicked, but of his own self, he would never have committed murder. He had been goaded into its commission by a temporary madness, and in time he repented most sincerely of his sin and died in the humble hope of forgiveness by a merciful Redeemer.
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