Page:The Father Confessor, Stories of Danger and Death.djvu/251

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THE TWIN BROTHERS
241

"And this fellow, God! what a grin he has!"

Ernest tried to draw his wife away, but she drew herself roughly from him, and went inside as though forced. When he followed she was standing gazing through the partition at two corpses lying inside: one that of a young woman with a cruel gash on her forehead, the other the body of his brother Hugh, lying smiling at him through the glass.


II

From the first day after Ernest reached home he noticed a change in his wife. She grew absent-minded, and would spend long hours in the woods and beside the river alone. When she met her husband at such times, she would flush and seem confused. At first he was troubled, thinking her ill. Then he became a prey to jealousy, and spied upon her, but never saw her with any one. His brother was dead; he had no other rival. What had he to fear? Yet he was disturbed. The con-