Page:Dale - A Marriage Below Zero.djvu/324

318 Dead!

In a dazed way I walked up to the chair and coldly glanced at the face, which, white and expressionless, looked to me unlike that which I had known as my husband's. The proprietor quietly went from the room and left me alone with Arthur. On the mantel-piece my staring eyes saw a small bottle, on which a label marked "laudanum" stood out with fearful clearness. Then I realized it all. With an agonized cry I flung myself into the unresisting arms of my husband. I kissed his cold, dead lips, his face, and the open, unseeing eyes, as I would have kissed him in life, had he willed it so. Ah! he could not ward me off now. He was mine, and I would cherish him forever.

Suddenly I sprang back, a horrible feeling of repulsion creeping over me. Just above Arthur's head, on the wall, I saw two portraits, placed together in a single frame. One represented my husband, happy and smiling; the other showed the hateful features of Captain Dillington. My grief gave place to a violent, overpowering sense of anger. Tearing the frame from the wall, I