The watcher stood as if turned to stone. He saw the woman retreat backward step by step into the room she had just quitted. He saw the man attempt to follow her. The door shut; again all was darkness and silence.
For one hateful, throbbing moment, that seemed to hold a lifetime of agony in its passage, Lord Francis stood there, gazing at the closed door. At last, with trembling limbs and face bloodless as the dead, he staggered back to his own room, and sank down on the chair where he had written that letter, with its pleading for love and reconciliation.
"Too late!" he cried. "O Heaven! to think my own eyes should be the witness of my own eternal shame and—hers!"
His head fell on his arms. He was as one dazed and stunned by the consciousness of misery undreamt of, despite those cold and silent years.
Moment after moment passed. One hour and then another dropped into the gulf of time that is no more. Still he never stirred. Consciousness of anything besides his own misery—besides the living recognition of his own shame—was dead within him; dead as youth was dead, and hope, and truth, and all things fair and sweet in life—slain by a woman's hand.
•••••
The dawn was brightening into daylight as at
