CHAPTER II.

"HERMAN, YOU WILL NOT DESERT ME?"

"Now is my time," muttered Dermoyne to himself, and at once he entered the passage, which branched from the head of the stairs, and led to the eastern wing of the mansion. How his heart beat, how his blood bounded in his veins, as he drew near the open door at the extremity of the passage!

On the threshold he paused--his form shrouded by the darkness, but the light from within the room shining upon his forehead--he paused and took a single glance at the scene which was disclosed to his vision.

Never till his dying hour shall he forget that scene.

A small apartment, with windows shut and sealed like the doors of a sepulcher.--On a small table, amid vials and surgical instruments, stands a light, whose rays tremble over the bed, which occupied the greater part of the room. Above the bed, from the darkly papered walls, smiles a picture of the Virgin Mary, while beneath, by the folds of the coverlet, you may trace the outlines of a human form.

Beside the bed stands a slender man dressed in black, with a heavy pair of gold spectacles on his hooked nose. It is Corkins, the familiar spirit of the Madam. Corkins, whose slender frame, incased in black, reminds you of the raven, while his face with top-knot, gold spectacles, ferret-like eyes, and pointed beard, reminds you of the owl.

"Bad!" mutters Corkins, "bad!" and he gazes upon the occupant of the bed, knotting his fingers together like a man who is exceedingly perplexed.

The bed and its occupant? Ask us not to picture the full horror of the sight which Arthur saw (from his place of concealment), as Corkins gently drew the coverlet aside.

"Alice!" he did not pronounce the word with his lips, but his heart uttered it--it was echoed in the depths of his soul.

He saw the pale face, and the sunny hair, which fell in a flood upon her bared shoulders. He saw the arms outspread, with the fingers trembling and working as with the impulse of a spasm. He saw the eyes which opened with a dead stare, and fixed vaguely upon the ceiling, had no look of life in their leaden glance. He saw the lips, which were colorless and almost covered with white foam. And as the sufferer moved her head, and flung it back upon the pillow, he saw her throat--no longer white and beautiful--but with swollen veins, writhing with torture, and starting from the discolored skin.

Never, never until his last hour can Arthur forget that sight.

And poor Alice, writhing thus between life and death, talked to herself in a voice husky and faint, and said certain words that made Arthur's blood gather in a flood about his heart:

"Herman, you will not desert me!" she said, and then while the foam was on her lips, she babbled of her father and home--writhing all the while in every nerve and vein.

Arthur entered the room. Corkins turned and beheld him, and uttered a cry of fright. For at that moment Arthur's face was not a pleasant face for any man to look upon, much less Corkins. And the iron bar which Arthur held in his clenched hand, taken into connection with the look on his face, reminded Corkins of stories which he had read--stories which told of living men, bruised suddenly to death by such a hand and such an iron bar. Corkins, therefore, uttered a cry of fright, and in his terror shook his gold spectacles from his parrot nose.

"Down," said Arthur, in a low voice, "on your knees,"--he pointed to a nook of the room, between the foot of the bed and the wall. "Stay there with your face to the wall."

Corkins obeyed. Trembling to the corner, he sank on his knees, and turned his face away from the door and turned toward the wall, there was such a persuasive eloquence in Arthur's look.

Then Arthur, still clutching the iron bar, drew near the head of the bed, and gazed upon Alice.

Stretching forth her arms, and opening and closing her little hands; flinging back her head, her eyes fixed upon the same point of the ceiling, no matter how she writhed--babbling with foaming lips about her father and her home,--it was one of the saddest sights that ever man beheld.

Arthur could not stand it. He turned his face away, and there was a choking sensation in his throat, and a painful heaving of his chest. His eyeballs were hot and tearless.--He would have given his life to shed a single tear.

But that moment of intolerable anguish was interrupted by the sound of footsteps resounding from the lower part of the mansion. Madam Resimer was returning to the room of Alice.

Arthur at once shrank into the corner where Corkins knelt, and touched the creature with his foot by way of warning. Then placing himself against the wall in such a manner that he could not be seen until the Madam entered the room, he awaited her return.

Her footsteps are on the stairs, and presently they are heard in the passage. Arthur, standing bolt upright against the wall, with the trembling Corkins at his feet, heard the rustling of her dress, as she came brushing along, with her heavy stride. Then he heard her voice--she was speaking to some one who accompanied her.

"There are two," he muttered, and bent his head to listen. He could distinguish her words:

"What a foolish fancy!" this was the voice of the Madam, "to think that any one could gain admittance to my house against my will. Why, my dear, the idea makes me laugh."

"Yes, but he's such a desperate ruffian," answered a second voice.

It was the voice of Rev. Herman Barnhurst.