I could not stand by and see her life endangered by some unknown villain's crime. What she would have died rather than confess, I have confessed for her, against her will. . . . ."
There was more to say, but it was never spoken. A calamity as terrible as it was unforeseen interrupted the words forever.
No one, apparently, had thought of keeping an eye upon John while I was speaking: he had been forgotten in the interest concentrated upon Sinfire and myself. Suddenly, in the stillness of the crowded room, a sound burst out which I can liken only to the roar of an angry lion; and I was conscious that some one had sprung towards me. It was my brother. His face was deformed with passion; he screamed out some words that were too furious to be articulate. That he meant to kill me, no one who saw him could doubt. There were two benches between him and the witness-box in which I stood: he cleared the first, but caught his foot on the back of the second, and fell forward with a crash. Three or four men lifted him: his features were contracted; there was a quivering about his eyebrows, and his eyes closed, opened, and closed again. "Don't lay him down! he hasn't fainted: it's the heart!" I cried out; and in a moment I had got out of the box, and was supporting his head against my shoulder. But he was beyond help. The strain upon the great organ of life during the past eighteen hours had been too severe, and the violent emotion caused by Sinfire's deposition, culminating in the rage kindled by my story, with the shock of his fall, had dealt him his death-blow. I felt his pulse shiver beneath my finger, and then stop. His head dropped forward with a hoarse sigh. I laid him gently down on the bench, and covered his face.
XVII.
So, by these strokes of good fortune, I am become heir of Cedarcliffe; and my dreams of power and felicity are within my grasp.
It is now three days since the scene in the court-room. The perjury which I committed answered its purpose. After considerable discussion, Sinfire was acquitted; and Henry's murderer still remains unknown. Even Sinfire's strong nerves were overthrown by the shock of John's terrible death, and, whether or not she had previously intended to challenge my testimony, she let the time pass by when she could have done so with effect. Since then she has remained at Faxon's house, where his wife waits upon her. But to-day I shall speak with her and learn her mind. What I have done has been done for her: that is my consolation. Even should she reject it, it will be a consolation still.
