CHAPTER XIX.
HE COULD NEVER FORGET HER NOW.
Laurie would never forget his return to The Crags that starless, moonless, sultry summer night, with the gloom of death seeming to brood darkly over the whole world.
Crawford, who met him at the station with a carriage, assured him that Miss Willoughby was critically ill.
She was lying in a stupor, recognizing no one.
Doctor White frankly owned that he feared brain fever.
Laurie talked to the mulatto the whole way to The Crags, trying to get at every particular of the tragedy.
The crime had, no doubt, been committed for revenge by the diamond-burglars who had escaped from the prison at Lewisburg, where they were awaiting trial, Crawford said, and the idea was so plausible that it took hold on Laurie’s mind, too. He accepted it as conclusive.
In a burst of despair he vowed he would spend every dollar of his fortune to bring the dastardly criminals to justice.
“Has nothing been done yet? No detective employed, no reward offered?” he asked the man sternly.
Crawford replied, readily, that he knew of no steps being taken yet. Miss Willoughby was naturally the one to take the lead in such efforts, but in her illness nothing could be done.
“I will see to it to-morrow. This terrible crime shall not go unpunished,” vowed Laurie.
The next moment the dull light of the carriage-lamps flickered on the wide gates of The Crags, and Crawford reined up the horses.
“Whoa, Saint! Whoa, Satan! Whoa!” he cried. At the words a pang like death tore through Laurie’s heart.
How they brought back that terrible moment so fraught with danger, when the maddened horses, rearing upright, toppled on the brink of the deadly precipice, to hurl himself and Lelia to instant destruction, when a girl’s sweet voice ringing on the air, and her small, white hand grappling at their bits, had arrested the impending tragedy and saved two lives.
Laurie would never forget those terrible moments, to his whole life’s end; nor the girl who had paid so costly a price for her bravery.
She was dead, sweet Gipsy, and she would never know how he loved and adored her, how he would mourn for her to the last moment of his life. Nothing was left but to avenge her death, and he swore to himself that he would never relax his efforts till he brought home the crime to the guilty party.
Slowly and with a sinking heart he went up the graveled walk to the broad, Colonial porch, and then the odor of a cigar was wafted through the sultry night air, and a stately, white-haired man rose out of the shadows to greet him.
It was his father, old General Willoughby.
“I waited up for you,” he said.
“Aunt Cyrilla?”
“Is still lying in the same comatose condition, resulting from shock. She must have been very fond of her protégée.”
“I am sure that she was,” Laurie answered earnestly, and almost added: “She was not the only one who loved that noble girl;” but he checked himself in time. What was the use of proclaiming his feelings now? He would get no sympathy from this stern, proud old man, who was already leading the way to his aunt’s room.
“See if you can rouse her from her stupor, Laurie,” he said anxiously, as they stepped lightly over the threshold where the sick woman lay upon her bed, under a light counterpane, her limbs extended stiffly beneath it like one already dead.
Laurie shuddered as he made his way to the bed, seeing, vaguely, the forms of several watchers in the room.
He took one cold, limp hand from the bed and pressed it warmly in his own, calling tenderly to the invalid lying with closed eyes:
“Don’t you know me, dear Aunt Cy? Won’t you speak to Laurie?”
There was no reply, no movement of the still and pallid face, not the flutter of an eyelid to show that she heard or understood, and her breathing was so faint it scarcely stirred the white linen over her breast. All the tender love he bore her surged into his breast, and forced a groan from his lips.
He had scarcely heeded a white figure in a chair, close by, but as he groaned, it started suddenly forward; it threw two warm white arms about him, it drooped a beautiful golden head against his breast, sobbing:
“Oh, Laurie, darling, it is heartrending, is it not? Will she never speak to us again, our dear aunt, who loved us so dearly? But I can do as she bade me, that last night, in her last words to me: ‘Lelia, write to Laurie to-morrow, tell him you were in the wrong, and that he must forgive you!’”