"The ball that entered Olney Winthrop's heart was fired by the hand of Leith Pierrepont!"

Over and over again, like the insistent surge of the waves, or the maddening repetition of some wild, fantastic melody, those words kept repeating themselves in Carlita's reeling brain.

She had crept away noiselessly when she had heard them spoken, crept away and almost crawled up the stairs to her own chamber, where the gathering darkness lay in somber shadows. She closed the door and turned the key, leaning against it in a weak, half-relieved sort of way, like the criminal who has gained a moment of respite from his too close pursuers.

But the haunting memory of those ghastly words aroused her again, and she pressed her hands upon her breast, her great eyes peering into the gloomy shadows, the words she had heard standing out before her in letters of glaring fire.

"It can't be—it can't be!" she panted, leaning forward as if she were speaking her passionate cry into some listening ear. "It can't be! Olney Winthrop murdered, and—Leith Pierrepont his—No, no, no! It can not be true! My God! I will not believe it! There is some awful mistake! Some hideous blunder! But then—but then—"

She paused and moistened her stiff lips, her eyes opening and closing curiously. She did not continue that monologue, but catching hold of a chair, then the foot of the bed, a table, then another chair, she dragged herself to the fireside, which had burned itself to little more than dull gray ashes.

She knelt upon the white bear-skin rug, and taking the poker tried to stir it into a blaze again; but the faint flicker made her shiver. She dropped the poker from her cold fingers, and burying her white face upon her knees crossed her arms around them.

Her grief for her betrothed seemed to be swallowed up in the awful sense of horror that oppressed her. It was not so much of Olney Winthrop murdered that she thought, as of Leith Pierrepont murderer.

And then the shadows lengthened and dusk faded into night. The poor fire died entirely and lay gray and passionless upon the hearth. The cold flash of an electric lamp shone through the window, over which the shade had not been drawn, and lay in a line of light across the floor, beyond which were ponderous caverns made of shadow.

It was ghoulish, eerie.

She would have thought it strange that her maid had not come to prepare her bath and bed if she had been in a condition to consider ordinary subjects, but matters of daily moment and time ceased to exist for her during those hours.

Once or twice she moved uneasily, and a hoarse moan left her lips as if some horrible thought, too heavy to be borne in silence, weighed upon her heart.

And then at last she lifted her head. The eyes burned like living coals, but the face was gray and passionless, like the dead ashes upon the hearth. It was a curious, uncanny contrast.

Her neck was stiff and sore from its long continuance in one position, but she did not seem to be conscious of it. Her fingers were still interlaced about her knee. Her mental faculties seemed to return to her suddenly.

"He told me that he loved me, that whether I desired or not, I should be his wife," she said in a low, hoarse tone that fitted the scene with curious horror, the "he" referring to Leith Pierrepont. "Knowing that I was the betrothed wife of his friend, he came in that friend's absence and made his dastardly proposal to me. Can it be that he has done this thing for—that? For that? In order that he might carry out this hideous desire? Good God! No human thing with the dim shadow of blood in his veins could do a thing so vile. And yet—God of Heaven, I will know! I must know! I will avenge you, Olney! I swear it! Do you hear me, sleeping there in your lonely grave? I swear that I will avenge you, and that I will bring your murderer to justice, let it cost me what it will of womanliness, of self-respect, of life itself even. My moment of weakness is passed, and the work shall commence at once."

She arose, feverishly stiff and cramped from her long, sorrowful vigil, and walked with a step that was almost firm to the door.

It never occurred to her to consider the time, but turning the key in the lock, she opened the door and went into the hall.

All was dark, the house strangely still.

"It is out of respect for—Olney," she whispered to herself, with a little catch in her voice like a sob. "It was kind of Jessica! After all—"

She didn't finish the sentence, but walked unsteadily up the hall. Her weakness seemed to come again with her knowledge of the darkness.

She paused before Jessica's door and hesitated for a moment, then she saw a faint gleam of light beneath the door. It gave her courage. She did not knock, but turned the knob gently. It yielded, and the door swung back.

The brilliant gleam of light blinded her for a moment, and then she saw Jessica standing beneath the chandelier. She was clothed in a long gown of shimmering greenish satin, the dÉcolletÉ bodice finished with a fall of lace that somehow made her look like a serpent which trails his long, singularly graceful body in the moonlight. About her handsome throat was a string of diamonds, and in the clustering coils of auburn hair a crown of diamonds that scintillated and flashed with defiant glitter.

And there was something in the cold look of the brown eyes that matched them strangely—a look that hardened as it rested upon the girl at the door.

She observed the expression of surprised contempt in Carlita's burning eyes all too clearly, but it only served to intensify her hatred.

"I—I didn't know you had—been out," Carlita stammered. "I half feared I should find you in bed. The house was still and dark. Is it late?"

"No, early—in the morning," Jessica answered, with a short laugh. "Haven't you been to bed? It is almost three. There! the clock is striking now."

"I had no idea—" returned Carlita, in an uncertain and indefinite sort of way, as if she didn't quite know what she wanted to say. "May I come in for a moment?"

"As well come in and close the door as stand there and have the draught blow on one," answered Jessica. "It has been a very stupid evening," stifling a yawn. "Calve was not in voice, and Jean de Reske didn't sing at all. It seems to me abominably like a swindle to announce at the last moment that some one whom you especially went to hear 'has a cold, and So-and-so has kindly consented to take his place.' Even the poker game afterward was stupid—insufferably stupid. Carlita, what a fool you are, that you don't cut all the Puritan idiocy of your bringing up, and try the gaits with me! You'd have twice the friends, live twice as long, and have a thousand times the fun."

Carlita shivered slightly, as her eyes traveled over the figure before her.

"I suppose you are right," she said, half stupidly; "but somehow it doesn't seem to be in my line."

"Pouf! You can do anything you like. What's the good of making a sepulcher of one's life—of living for death, so to speak—when you have so little of life and so much of death? You make a constant sermon of yourself, and people hate sermons. That's why they go to sleep in church. You never see any one go to sleep at a poker-table. There are people who talk against it, I know—'wouldn't have their sisters play for their right arms,' and all that rot—and then turn round and kill their best friend!"

She laughed shortly, heavily, hatefully, and again Carlita shivered, while she moved uneasily.

"It is inconsistent," she said, in a stony sort of way; "but so few people are consistent. I wanted to ask you about—him. You know—the man whom—"

"Leith Pierrepont?"

"Yes."

"What about him?"

"What did he tell you about—Olney? I fainted, or—or something—and after that he had gone."

She was suffering too acutely to observe the gleam in the red-brown eyes, and there was nothing in the voice to attract attention.

"Olney is—dead. You know that?"

"Oh, yes; he said that. But how?"

"Shot through the heart."

Carlita moistened her lips, and then continued her grewsome questioning.

"And they buried him—?"

"Out there."

"Was there an effort made to—to discover the murderer?"

"Effort? Oh, yes; I suppose so. But, after all, what does 'effort' amount to in a place like that? His murderer might have been standing right beside the coffin, and no one would have made an 'effort' to arrest him. Leith Pierrepont himself says that man's importance is measured there by the number of men he has slain."

"Good heavens! He said that?"

"Yes."

"The dastard!"

"It is doubly pitiful for poor Olney," Jessica continued, volubly, "because he was so alone in the world. There is no one to take his case for him—no one to see that justice is done. The murder was committed out of the country, and so the murderer will go scot-free, deceiving other people, his polluted body in contact with that of innocence—perhaps even marry a pure young girl."

"No!" cried Carlita, her voice tragic in its suppressed passion—"never! Olney is not without an avenger. I have sworn before Heaven a solemn vow that I will bring his murderer to punishment for his cowardly crime; and I will keep that vow, let it cost me what it will of happiness, of life, or even honor. All the world shall know and scorn him for the thing he is, and God Himself shall put upon him the brand of Cain. I have sworn an oath to Olney dead, and may I stand accursed before Heaven if I fail to keep it!"

She went swiftly from the room, and Jessica closed the door behind her, her low, strident laughter filling the room with unmusical sound.

"I shall have my revenge upon both," she said, with sardonic triumph—"my sweet revenge!"