CHAPTER VI.

Francis Arnold was dead. The soul of the proud millionaire, the disappointed husband, the loving uncle, had been hurried prematurely before the bar of Eternal Justice. In the stillness of the summer night while he rested in fancied security beneath his own roof-tree, the angel of sleep pressing down his weary eye-lids, the deadly destroyer had crept to his side, and red-handed murder had struck the cowardly blow that spilled his life blood.

[Pg 20]

They came hurrying out—the servants first, the wife next, the step-daughter last—all roused by that piercing shriek of agony—and found him sitting there dead, with Bonnibel lying lifeless at his feet, her white robes dabbled and stained in the blood upon the floor.

They brought lights and looked at him. Yes, he was cold and dead. There was a great scarlet stain on his white vest where the deadly weapon had entered his heart. The blood had dripped down in a great pool upon the floor and was fast stiffening on his garments.

Mrs. Arnold shrieked aloud and went into horrible hysterics, laughing wildly and maniacally, and tearing her hair from its fastenings; but Felise Herbert stood still as a statue of horror, looking at the dismal scene. Her pale face was paler than ever, and her large, black eyes looked wildly about her. She made no effort to arrest her mother's frenzied cries, but stood still as if frozen into ice, while the maids lifted up the still form of poor Bonnibel and carried her through the drawing-room window, laying her down gently, and applying restoratives.

Life came swiftly back to her under their influence. She lifted her head, and opened her eyes upon the faces around her just as a shrill and piercing whistle announced the departure of the train which was bearing her young husband away from her for years—perhaps forever.

Bonnibel sprang up and went out on the piazza again. As she stepped to the side of that lifeless form, Felise Herbert, just waking from her apparent trance of horror, waved her hands in the air, and cried out solemnly and sepulchrally:

"Oh, Heaven! It is Leslie Dane who has done this dreadful deed. That was what he meant by his dark threats this evening!"

"Leslie Dane has killed him!" echoed her mother, wildly.

"It is false, woman! How dare you accuse him of such a deed?" Bonnibel cried out fiercely, wild with grief and horror; then suddenly she looked at the half-dazed men-servants standing around their master helplessly.

"Idiots!" she cried, "why do you stand here idle? Why does not some one bring a doctor? Perhaps he is not dead yet—he may be revived."

They brought a physician at her bidding, but when he came his services were needed for her, not for the pale corpse down stairs that would nevermore want the physician's potent art. They had taken her by force to her room, where she was wildly walking the floor, wringing her hands and raving over her loss.

"You are dead, Uncle Francis," she cried, passionately; "you will never speak to me again. And I had left you in anger. We never quarreled before—never! And without a good-bye kiss, without a forgiving word, you are gone from me into the darkness of death! They have killed you, my dear one!—who could have been so cruel?—and you will never know how I loved you, and that I forgave you for your cruelty so soon, or that I wished to be reconciled. Oh, God! Oh, God!"

She told her story frankly to the good old doctor when he[Pg 21] came and questioned her. She and her uncle had quarreled because he had denied her a darling wish. She had rushed out of the house in a fit of anger, and moped about the seashore until late into the night. Then she had returned, and seeing him sitting there on the piazza she had felt her anger melting into tenderness, and stolen up to give him the kiss of reconciliation, but found him cold and dead.

She told the same story when the inquest was held next day, blushing crimson when they asked her what she and her uncle had quarreled over.

"It was a purely personal matter," she answered, hesitatingly. "Is it necessary to reveal it?"

They told her it was necessary.

"He refused to sanction my engagement to my lover, and drove him away from the house with cruel, insulting words," she answered briefly through her tears and blushes.

"And you were very angry with your uncle?"

"Yes; for a little while," she answered frankly; "but when I came back to the house I was ready to forgive him and be friends with him again. He had never been unkind to me before, but indulged me in every wish, and petted me as my own father might have done had he lived. I was almost wild at first with surprise and anger at the first denial I had ever received from him; but I soon overcame my indignant feelings, and when I came back to the house I loved him as fondly as ever."

She left the room immediately after giving in her evidence, overcome with grief and emotion, and going to her room, threw herself down upon the bed, from which she did not rise again for many weeks. Grief and excitement precipitated her into a brain fever, and for many days life and death fought persistently over their unhappy victim.

Had she known what would take place after she left the room she would have remained until the inquest was over. Felise Herbert and her mother boldly declared their belief that Leslie Dane was the murderer of Mr. Arnold. From the drawing-room windows which opened out on the piazza they had overheard the conversation between the two men relative to Bonnibel, and they detailed every word, maliciously misrepresenting Leslie Dane's indignant words so as to place the worst construction upon them. One or two of the servants had heard also, and from all the testimony elicited the jury readily found a verdict of willful homicide against Leslie Dane, and a warrant was issued for the young man's arrest.

But poor little Bonnibel, tossing up-stairs in her fevered delirium, knew nothing of all this. If she had known she might easily have cleared her lover from that foul charge by proving that he had been with her during those fatal hours in which Mr. Arnold had met his death.

It remained for her to prove his innocence at a darker hour than this, and at the sacrifice of much that she held dear.

Mr. Arnold's body was carried to his winter residence in New York, and buried from thence with all the pomp and splendor[Pg 22] due to his wealth and station. Felise and her mother, of course, accompanied the remains.

The housekeeper at the seaside home was left in charge of the hapless Bonnibel, who lay sick unto death in her luxurious chamber, tended carefully by hirelings and strangers, but with never one kiss of love to fall on her fevered brow in sympathy and tenderness.

Love had gone out of her life. With the young husband adrift now on the wide sea, and the kindly uncle lying in his gory grave, love had gone away from her.

She had no kindred now from whom to claim tenderness or care, so only hirelings were left to watch the spark of life flickering so feebly day by day, that it seemed as if it must surely go out in darkness. They were all who heard the wild, passionate appeals for Leslie and Uncle Francis that were always on the sufferer's lips as she babbled incoherently in her wild delirium.

Mrs. Arnold and Felise remained in New York for several weeks, attending to business affairs and superintending the making up of very fashionable and cumbrous mourning.

Mrs. Arnold did not provide any of this raiment for Bonnibel. She sincerely hoped that the girl would die of her fever and preclude the necessity of so doing.

But youth is very tenacious of life. Bonnibel, in her illness and desolation, would willingly have died to please her aunt, but destiny had decreed otherwise.

There came a cool, still night in September when the nurses hung carefully around the bed waiting for the crisis that the doctor had said would come at midnight. It came, and the reaper, Death, with his sickle keen, passed by on the other side.

In the meanwhile outraged justice was on the qui vive for the escaped homicide, Leslie Dane. It was rumored that he had sought refuge in a foreign land, but nothing definite could be learned regarding his mysterious whereabouts.