United States or Bahamas ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Hubert Varrick, standing behind the foliage, was fairly stricken dumb by what he heard and saw. He did not love his bride, but he believed in her implicitly. All the old doubt which had filled his heart and killed his love for Gerelda came surging back like a raging torrent, sweeping over his very soul.
Still there was no change, save that the white face on the pillow grew whiter, with a tinge of gray on it now. The clock on the mantel seemed to tick louder and louder, and cry out hoarsely: "Time is fleeing fast! It will soon be too late for Gerelda to clear Hubert Varrick and save him from a felon's death!" Jessie Bain paced the floor up and down, in agony.
There was no lady about of this the valet was positive, and his last message to this man, who was with him to the end, was to search for Gerelda Northrup, and tell her that with his last breath he was murmuring her name, and that he wanted to be buried on the spot where they had first met.
"She even refuses to have her bridal-dress removed," said the maid; "and I do not know what to do about it. She has uttered no word since first she crossed your threshold; she will not speak." Captain Frazier looked troubled, distressed. Would Gerelda keep her vow?
Although the nurse had not seen Gerelda since she was a little child, she knew her the moment her eyes rested upon her face, and with a cry of amazement she drew back. "Gerelda Northrup!" she gasped. "Is it you, Miss Gerelda, or do my eyes deceive me?"
As he stood gazing at it, the clock in some adjacent steeple slowly struck the midnight hour. He wondered if Jessie was there. How he felt like telling some one his troubles! Early the next morning Varrick was at the scene of the disaster, though he was scarcely fit to leave his bed at the village hostelry. Most of the bodies had been recovered or accounted for, save that of Gerelda.
She looked highly displeased when the servant approached her, announcing that this person indicating Gerelda desired particularly to speak with her a few moments. "If you are a peddler or in search of work, you should go round to the servants' door," she said, brusquely. Gerelda never knew until then what a very cross mother-in-law she had escaped.
Had his eyes deceived him? They evidently had. And then again he told himself that, thinking so much of Gerelda, he had imagined that the face he had seen for a moment in the flash-light bore a striking resemblance to hers. And he persuaded himself to believe that the fisherman's story was a myth.
I come of a desperate race, Gerelda," he went on, huskily, "and when you showed me so plainly that you still liked my society, even after you had plighted your troth to another, I clung to the mad idea that there was yet hope for me, if we were far away from those who might come between us.
She repented of marrying me at the eleventh hour, and ere it was too late she fled with the lover who must have awaited her, in an agony of suspense, outside." All the guests had gathered about them. "Where is Miss Gerelda?" they all cried in a breath. "She must have fallen from the window," they echoed; and immediately there was a stampede out toward the grounds.
Word Of The Day