CHAPTER XXXI.
THE DEAD ALIVE.
He sat there, helplessly, for some time like one dazed, so terrible was the shock of knowing that Gipsy was really dead.
Up to this time he had secretly cherished a faint hope that the dark clouds of mystery might clear away and show that she was yet alive.
Although his love for her was all in vain, and she could never belong to him now since Lelia had bound him with hated fetters, he could not bear to think of her as dead, all her wondrous beauty faded, her voice of music stilled, her presence vanished from the earth forever.
His father came into the library and found him there in the armchair with the paper clenched in his hand.
“What is the matter? Are you ill?” he asked, in surprise.
“I have just had a great shock! Read this note that came with my mail this morning.”
The general was so shocked that he also sat down, trembling.
“Can it be true? Her body in the old well, poor girl? Perhaps it is only a hoax, Laurie.”
“There is no signature, you see. Some heartless wretch may be amusing himself at our expense!” the young man cried, with a gleam of hope.
His father arose, saying:
“It will be easy enough to verify, anyhow. Shall I send the men servants to search the well, Laurie?”
“Yes, I will be very grateful. I own I am too much unnerved to attend to it myself,” and he bowed his handsome head upon the desk, a prey to the most harrowing anxiety.
With senses strained to their utmost tension, eagerly alert to every sound, his heart aching with the cruelest pain he had ever known, he drooped there in the chair, hearing dully from without the sounds of steps and voices as the men hastened to their gruesome task.
There were steps and voices in the room at last, and his father was saying:
“The mystery deepens. The body was not there.”
“Thank God!” uttered Laurie fervently.
Another voice echoed wildly:
“Not there!”
It was Lelia who had entered just in time for the general’s words.
She had a pale, scared look as she repeated:
“Not there!”
“It is very, very strange,” said the general, and he added:
“The well was not deep, and the men had little trouble getting to the bottom. They found nothing there but the rotten boards that had fallen in from the top of the well.”
“How very, very strange!” echoed Lelia, in a hollow voice.
She sank into a chair, her face white and wild, her form trembling. What had become of Gipsy Darke’s body? Who had dragged it up out of the old well? Where was it now?
The general continued:
“Yet it is possible there was an effort to throw some one into the well. The grass and earth were broken and trampled roundabout, and there were dark stains upon the leaves, rust-colored like dried blood, as if some sort of a struggle had taken place there. There were some fragments, too, of a white gown fluttering from an old, rusty hook on one side of the well.”
“Let me see them?” Laurie asked, and the general placed them in his hand.
Some jagged strips of white, dotted muslin, that was all; but there was despair in Laurie Willoughby’s voice as he cried:
“I saw Gipsy Darke the afternoon before she was murdered, and she wore a white gown of this exact pattern!”
“Then it was not a hoax. Her body must have been thrown into the well, as your anonymous correspondent asserts, but who removed it?” Colonel Ritchie exclaimed, in wonder.
Who, indeed?
Lelia asked herself that question in dismay, frightened at the hovering clouds of mystery that hung over the tragedy.
No one had noticed a dark, picturesque face peering in through the open door while they talked. No one saw the gipsy queen enter the room, and all started when a deep, musical voice exclaimed:
“I come to claim the reward, kind gentlemen. I bring news of Gipsy Darke!”
Lelia screamed in affright:
“Go away, you horrible old hag!”
“Hush, my dear!” said the general, rebukingly; and the woman continued:
“The reward is mine! I can lead you to Gipsy Darke, who is safe at the gipsy camp!”
Lelia clung entreatingly to Laurie’s arm, crying:
“Do not listen to this miserable impostor, dear Laurie. She is only telling you falsehoods to extort money from you! Gipsy Darke is certainly dead, there can be no doubt of it!”
“How do you happen to know so much about it, my pretty lady?” sneered the gipsy, fixing her bold, black eyes suspiciously on the beauty’s pale, writhing face.
“Do not dare to address me, insolent intruder! Go!” and Lelia pointed, angrily, at the door.
“Then the pretty lady wants no news of poor Gipsy Darke? That is very strange. Perhaps it is true, as the servants at The Crags are telling, that she is jealous of the poor girl who inherited the Willoughby money and who is now a great heiress!” muttered the woman, in scathing rebuke of Lelia’s rudeness, so that the general scowled at her darkly.
“Peace, woman; do not presume to talk back to Mrs. Willoughby!” he said sternly.
Then he looked at Lelia, adding, with equal decision:
“Please restrain yourself or leave the room until we hear this woman’s story.”
“I will not go!” Lelia muttered rebelliously.
“Then, be silent!” he said, and turned to the woman.
“We offered the reward in good faith, and if you have earned it you shall have it!” he said. “But first you must produce the body of Gipsy Darke either dead or alive, and it must be properly identified.”
“You will find no difficulty in doing so,” the woman answered confidently. “She is at the camp, where she has been ever since she was dragged out of the old well, half-drowned, but alive, and brought to me by my son!”