Page:Lady Barbarity; a romance (IA ladybarbarityrom00snai).pdf/288

 with my heart grown too big for my body, and apparently bursting through my side, so complete was the illusion played by terror upon my several senses, that I was absolutely sure that it was the prisoner who was hit, that I had lost a lover, and that the world had lost a hero.

When I arrived breathless upon the battle-*ground, the survivor was kneeling still beside his fallen foe, and appeared to be feeling at his breast. But death ever wears an aspect that is wholly unmistakable, and the lad fully extended on his face, hands straight by his side, and his form prone beneath the ghastly moon, told me all too surely that the life had gone out of him for ever. Without a word I also fell upon my knees beside the corpse, and took one of the dead man's hands within my own. The murderer, still kneeling the other side of the body, appeared to raise his face and look at me, and then he cried in a voice of hoarse astonishment:

"You?"

I did not answer, but still nursed the dead man's hand, almost without knowing that I did so, such strange things does passion do.

"Lady Barbara," he said, in a voice quite unendurable to my ears.

"Do not speak," I whispered, "I cannot bear to hear you speak."

"Lady Barbara," he said again.

"God curse you!" I muttered through shut teeth.