Page:The Fate of Fenella (1892).djvu/237

 the head of the wretched Frank Onslow. He had lost his adored wife and had found her; he had been granted the supreme hour of reconciliation and rapture, and it was turned into the dull agony of expected death. He had been told that if she awakened from her dull brain stupor, and could mingle her kisses with those of her husband and her child, her life might be spared, and he knew that when she did awake and discovered that her lover and her lord had vanished without a word, she might be dead even now. He might have killed her. He who would have died to give her life, might, for aught he knew, have struck her once more, just as she was tottering into the very arms of death. Everything had failed; utterly, completely failed. Frank Onslow had become gray with grief.

The child who should have been in his arms was lost, God knows where. The wife whose life depended upon his honor was either dying or dead. The woman who had by him been changed from a companion into a fiend was triumphant. And he, the hapless victim, was under lock and key, powerless to move, impotent for good or evil.

The more the poor creature protested his sanity the more mad he seemed to be. The very situation, the ghastly surroundings, the hideous objects he met on every side, were enough to turn the brain of the strongest man. Insanity is