CHAPTER XXV.

THE MASK OF A GUILTY SOUL.

If the aroused sleepers on the night of the tragedy at The Crags had but followed up the alarm, instead of ascribing the shrieks to nightmare dreams, the young girl might have been succored at once, and the current of this story turned into less tragic channels.

For Lelia’s frenzied blows on the poor girl’s head had not killed her, as she believed, only stunned her into insensibility.

But quite sure of her death, and fearful of discovery, the criminal fled in terror from the dreadful scene, and locked herself fast in her own room to remove the stains of her terrible deed.

Tearing off her blood-stained garments, she rolled them into a tight bundle, concealing them temporarily till she could find an opportunity to consign them to the flames.

Her hair, her hands, her face were all spotted with crimson streaks, and she shuddered like one in an ague chill as she washed the stains away.

Her task accomplished, she threw on a wrapper and lay shudderingly down to rest on a couch, thinking with alarm of the morrow, when the bloody corpse of her victim should be discovered on the floor of the little room.

What a sensation there would be! How would she be able to act her part of surprise and innocence? How could she bear to look upon the dumb, accusing face of that poor dead girl?

“If I could only hide the body there would not be half so much sensation, and we should avoid the horrors of a funeral!” flashed over her excited mind.

She sat racking her brains for some means of getting the corpse out of the room.

All at once it came to her clearly.

Out among the shrubberies, not so far from the house, was an old, unused well that had been boarded over for years. The water was strongly impregnated with sulfur and iron, and very unpleasant to the taste, so it had been abandoned for good, because there was a cool spring of the same mineral waters on the place.

“If I could tumble Gipsy out of her window, and drag her to the old well and throw her in, no one would ever know what became of her body, it could not even be proved that a murder had been committed,” she thought, screwing up her courage to the dreadful task.

Fortune had favored her already in permitting her to escape from the scene of her crime undetected, and now she must trust to her luck to aid her in accomplishing the rest of her work in secrecy.

The moon was going down, she had that much in her favor if she chanced to meet any one in the grounds, but she did not fail to mask her face in a dark veil, after putting on a black rainy-day skirt and clumsy cape that made a good disguise.

Then gliding like an evil spirit through the dark corridors of the silent house, she gained Gipsy’s room again, carrying with her a stout linen sheet to serve the purpose of a rope in dragging the body to the well.

Silent and bleeding lay the unconscious form of Gipsy, and, locking the door against any possible intrusion, Lelia knelt down and shudderingly knotted the sheet rope-fashion about the girl’s slim waist. She was taller and larger than Gipsy, and it was easy then to get her body to the window and push it rudely over the sill to the ground two stories below. It fell with a dull thud upon some flower-beds beneath, and there was nothing more but to finish her work.

Trembling, panting, half-crazed with fear of detection, Lelia hurried down-stairs, out into the odorous darkness of the summer night.

Looking furtively about, she detected nothing living but herself, not even the dogs that usually guarded the grounds, for they were taking a midnight excursion to some neighboring farm.

Thanking fortune for her good luck, she seized the corners of the sheet, and with courage born of desperation, rapidly dragged her burden to the dark shrubberies that hid the disused well.

Arrived there, a new difficulty confronted her. The well was boarded over.

Could she succeed in removing the cover?

In the darkness, beside the silent victim of her hate, Lelia knelt down and felt of the boards, moldy with age, and damp with night dew. She tried to wrench one loose.

Joy--joy! It yielded; the rotten boards crumbled in her grasp.

Beating them down with bare, desperate hands, they fell into the well, and she heard their low echo coming back as they splashed into the water that would soon be Gipsy’s dreary grave.

One moment and all would be over and her terrible secret hidden from the sight of men down under the cold, black water.

She was panting with fear and horror combined, the cold sweat of exhaustion ran down her face in streams, she was so oppressed with the weight of her sin and her danger that she felt like dying of the mere horror of the moment.

There was blood upon her fair, white hands, blood on her guilty soul. She had taken life, and the horror of it would be upon her forever. She could never be happy again.

This guilty secret on her soul would darken the fair face of day to her forever, would haunt her feverish slumbers, would stalk by her side throughout the world henceforth. Yet she would have to wear always a careless smile, the mask of a guilty soul.

Why was she shuddering, lingering; why did she hold back from the completion of her nefarious work? Was she stricken with remorse, did she wish she could restore life to that senseless lump of clay that she had always hated with cruel hate? Oh, no, she would not do it if she could! The deed was done, and, though nature stood aghast at this outrage of conscience, she would not bring back her helpless rival to blush at Laurie’s smiles and words, and wear his ring again.

With a low laugh of scorn at her momentary flinching, and a new accession of hate for her victim, Lelia stood up and caught the ends of the sheet again, dragging the body to the verge of the well.

Then she gave it a vicious push with her foot.

It toppled on the verge, it went over in the darkness!

With the splash of the water ringing loud in her ears, Lelia fled to the house.