Stories with a Vengeance — page 113: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

ORB RUNS YOUR MIND the mystic moment. So, clasped in one another’s arms, each uttered a silent prayer that they had been broughi, though by a thorny path, to this true marriage of souls. Cet ee CHAPTER XI. THE sight of Sir Clyffe’s beaming counte- nance, as, with his smiling wife on his arm, he entered the ball-room a few minutes after midnight, filled Lady Clare with annoyance and amazement. How could so sudden a reconciliation have come about P Not half an hour ago, wasn’t she herself téte-d-téte with this man in the corridor, his dearest, most trusted friend ? Could it really be only half an hour since she had him so completely in her power as to have overruled his desire to send away Gertrude, and throw himself upon his wife’s mercy! Was it actually only twenty or thirty minutes since, taking her own beauti- ful hand, and pressing it to his lips, her dupe had declared with intense feeling that, whatever would be the issue of his unhappy circumstances, he should, at any rate, always thank Heaven for giving him the truest, most considerate friend ever a man was blest with! ; “Yes; half an hour before, her plans seemed to besucceeding. Now, with furious despair in her heart, Lady Clare saw the game was up. She wished the oaken floor would open and swallow her, as tradition said it once did the knight whose skeleton was found in full armour under the stone hearth of the hall where Sir Clyffe and Lucy were now dancing so gaily. To look at them made her loathe -exist- ence. “Yes, by Jove, she is by far the hand- somest woman in the room!” she overheard one elderly man remark to another. ‘“‘ Lady Clare Eliot, did you say? Not the widow, surely, of a scampish cad of a fellow whom we chased years ago from the llth, for cheating at cards P” “The same.” ‘Ah, well, she’s a magnificent woman all the same. By Jove, I never saw a finer figure in my life! She’d look queenly behind a pair of high steppers !” In the evolutions of the dance, Sir Clyffe had to poussette with Lady Clare, and, with a friendly little aque of her hand, took the opportunity of whispering that all was cxplamed at last. : Lucy also seized the chance of momen- tary contact in the “ ladies’ chain”’ to do ind say pretty much the same thing. Both made sure of the widow’s pleasure Google 109 in their reunion; for, with diabolical cunning, she had all along so carefully worded her hints as to make each put a different interpretation on them. Her prudence now had its reward, for husband and wife were alike convinced she was, and always would be, the sincerest well-wisher they had. And she! If she could have poisoned them with a breath, they never would have seen another day ! Oh, how she hated them, and everybody and everything—herself most of all! The wealthy old nobleman whom she heard admiring her figure got introduced, and gave her his arm to promenade up and down the rooms. The sudden change in the behaviour of the Dashwoods astonished Lord Marston as much as his sister; but he and Lady Clare drove home in silence. After her maid left her, the widow sat down at the open window, and gazed into the deep darkness that precedes the dawn. An owl was hooting eerily in an ivy-bush near the house. “ Would to Heaven it were morning !” thought the wretched woman. ‘“ How can I endure lying sleepless hour after hour ?” She sat so long, that the fire went out; and then, to keep heat in her frame, got up, and rushed, barefooted as she was, from side to side of the large, low-roofed room. Her head seemed on fire and the rest of her frozen. The owl was silent, but a hen began crowing. So bad an omen would have frightened Lucy; but Lady Clare was too materialistic to. be superstitious. If there be any truth in Geethe’s asser- tion, that der aberglawbe (over belief) is the poetry of life, she had missed the plea- sure as well as the pain of it. Suddenly she remembered of a bottle of chloral in her bureau. It was a thing she rarely used; but the idea of an hour or two’s forgetfulness came now to her as fresh air would have done to the prisoners in the black hole of Calcutta. Again the owl hooted dismally. She had no measure for the chloral, but taking the phial into bed, swallowed what she guessed might hesalnnoae a teaspoonful. * ¥ ON ANOTHER LOVE? Extract from the Yorkshire Pegasus of Jan. 2, 187— :— *““SUDDEN DEATH OF LADY CLARE ELIOT. “A frightful and rere event ov- curred yesterday morning at Dane Rock Hall, the residence of Lord Marston. CY, JOO S CO)