CHAPTER XL.

THE PROOFS OF HER GUILT.

“I beg pardon,” cried Laurie Willoughby, striding forward. With a resolute grasp, he tore the package from the woman’s hands, though she shrieked viciously:

“Restore it to me, I command you!”

Like a tigress, she flung herself upon him, struggling for possession of the package, dreading to see it opened, eager to carry it away.

But a terrible suspicion was forming in his mind.

Firmly, without hurting her, he held her aloof, thrusting the bundle to his father, saying hoarsely:

“Open it--let us know the worst!”

General Willoughby, dazed and fearful, obeyed.

While Lelia groped in the air aimlessly for what she had lost, and Laurie held her mother’s hands in a grasp like steel, General Willoughby shook out the folds of a white robe all stained and spotted with blood, two letters, and a ring.

“My God, the proofs of her guilt!” the wretched husband cried, in a voice of anguish.

He released Mrs. Ritchie’s hands, and she sank to the ground like a stone, crouching there in abject misery.

It was one of the most terrible moments in their three lives--that moment in which they looked in horror on the proofs of Lelia’s crime.

Her self-accusations they had looked on leniently, believing them nightmare dreams, as her mother said, the product of an overwrought mind and alert sympathies.

While they had listened in pain and alarm, no suspicion had crossed their minds that she was guilty--she, the beautiful, gently nurtured girl, their pet and pride all her life.

They had shut their eyes to her hideous deformities of temper, her pride and self-will, her scorn of Gipsy Darke, and her low estate.

Her mother, indeed, had fostered every evil trait, never dreaming to what a terrible strait uncontrolled passion would yet bring her idolized daughter.

They had listened in horror and grief to her ravings; they had feared she was going mad, but in neither mind dawned any suspicion of her blood guiltiness.

It was left to the moment when she dragged the bundle from its hiding-place for an awful thought to be born in Laurie Willoughby’s mind.

That thought made him take the bundle from the frantic mother, firmly resolved to know its fatal contents.

When the dainty white gown, all crumpled and blood-stained, was unrolled before his eyes, and the ring and letters fell at his feet, a strong shudder, as of one dying, shook his whole stalwart frame.

“The proofs of her guilt!” he cried, in an awful voice.

For a conviction of the truth came home to him. He had not a single doubt but that everything had happened as Lelia had told it in her strange, somnambulistic state.

She had murdered Gipsy, as she believed, and latent remorse had wrought upon her nerves, goading her into unconscious self-betrayal.

With blended pity and horror, he looked upon the beautiful, wild-eyed creature, groping in the air for what she had lost, muttering that Laurie must never find it--no, no, no, or he would be so angry he would never love her again.

With a shudder he released Mrs. Ritchie, who sank heavily into a chair, her whole frame shaking with tearless sobs of terrible despair.

He picked up the beautiful ring that was all crusted and dark with blood, as Lelia had said. Oh, what a terrible price had poor Gipsy paid for her few hours of happiness in its possession!

“These two letters,” he said, “I wrote to my aunt and to Gipsy Darke, and Lelia must have intercepted them. They were written on a private matter, that can interest no one now.”

He placed them in his breast-pocket, and drew out a shining gold button.

“I searched poor Gipsy’s room for a clue to her murderer, and I found this button on the floor in a wisp of dark hair,” he said. Then touching the sleeves of the white gown, “I see one button missing here, and this is the mate to it. Every link in the evidence is made clear now. We cannot doubt Lelia’s self-confessed sin.”

“Oh, my God, Laurie, what are you going to do to my poor child? She did not mean to do it--it was all an accident; you heard her say so! And, after all, that wretched girl is alive and well, and has triumphed over us in every way!” sobbed the wretched mother.

He looked at her a moment without speaking, his mind busy with the problem she had presented.

In great emergencies the mind moves very rapidly. His course was quickly decided.

“I think my father’s idea of sending Lelia to a hospital for nerve treatment an excellent one,” he said. “If she objects, she must be made to understand that it is the most prudent course. As for her guilty secret, since Miss Whitney chooses to keep it, let us three be as generous. For the rest, I leave The Crags to-morrow, and America soon afterward, for an indefinite sojourn abroad. I shall appoint my father in my place as Miss Whitney’s guardian.”

“And Lelia?” the mother cried eagerly. “Will you not in time forgive her, and take her home to your heart?”

“Never!”

“That is cruel, Laurie.”

“No, it is only just. She will never be wife of mine, save in name only.”

Lelia had sunk down upon the floor, with her arms clasped around her knees. A dull calm had succeeded her wild ravings.

“She will come to herself soon--she grows calmer. Indeed, this is the worst spell she ever had. I did not dream of those telltale proofs, or I would have destroyed them,” the poor mother cried, defiantly adding: “You may leave me alone with her now, to tell her when she is rational the cruel truth that will break her heart and drive her mad in reality.”

Laurie and his father bowed silently and withdrew, leaving her alone with Lelia amid the desolate ruins of their towering hopes and dreams.

It seemed as if The Crags was never to have done with sensations.

The next day it was whispered about that the young bride, Mrs. Willoughby, had suffered a nervous collapse from the troubles at The Crags, and was to be placed at once in a Northern sanatorium for treatment.

She remained closely in her room all the next day, attended only by her mother. What went on behind that closed door none knew but Mrs. Ritchie, but by the dawn of the morrow the gray hairs she was dreading shone silvery white in her fair hair. Lelia had not taken her defeat very well.

And the bridegroom was gone without any farewells to his unloved bride.