night? Oh, Frank, Frank! it was then that you lost me,—not when you crept upon him in the wood and shot him through the heart! I believed then that you were an avenger; but in the witness-box you revealed yourself as a murderer. Even if you had been silent, and let them hang me, I would have rejoiced in you, for love lives by sacrifice; as you had saved me from the guilt of blood, I would have saved you from its consequence. Or, if you had taken my hand over his body, and said, 'I have done this for you!' I would have come to you forever, and gone with you to the end of the world! But you did not trust me; and the lie you told was a shameful and a timorous lie!"
"So you were in the wood and saw me kill him?" said I.
"Yes, I saw it."
"I wish you had told me before," I rejoined. "But it is no matter now. I see that I have made a mistake. You are right to go. By the way, the estate descended to me in tail, but on my decease without issue it falls to the next of kin, which is yourself. John's personalty is already yours, by his will. As for Henry, he had not much besides his life, and that, as you say, I took from him,—on your account chiefly. That is all, I think; except my mother : she will not last long: will you see that she dies in decent circumstances? It would not be too exacting a recompense for having taken from her her three sons and the estate of Cedarcliffe."
She looked at me a long time. I do not know what she sought, or what she found. But all passion and suffering had burnt themselves out in me. I stood there, wishing that she would go and leave me in peace. I knew that she had never been more beautiful; but her beauty could not impress me or interest me: I looked upon it as unemotionally as an animal might have done. Indeed, she was phantom-like to me, at the last. I thought. If I pinch myself, or stamp my foot, she will not be there. And at last, in truth, she was not there; and as I reseated myself in my chair I was inclined, half in jest, to ask myself whether such a creature as Sinfire ever really existed.
I might doubt it, but for one little thing that she said at parting, just the moment before she disappeared. She said No; I will not write it down. Let me take that one thing away with me, untouched.
And now for Sâprani, my Queen of Cobras! Faithful are the wounds of a friend. Ah, Sâprani, I was foolish to wander from you. There is a virtue in your cold, sharp kiss that makes all other caresses tame.
THE END.
