Page:The Fate of Fenella (1892).djvu/321

 his feet with a smothered cry of joy, rose—and the next instant sat down again heavily, with a groan of irrepressible disappointment. For the woman who stood there, dazzling yet in her faded southern beauty, was not Fenella; it was Lucille de Vigny, whom, as he fondly imagined, he had last beheld drowning in the blue-green waves, clasped in the fierce embrace of her injured and revengeful husband, the blade of whose dagger was deeply embedded in her bosom.

The shock of the surprise was considerable; it was some time before he could recover sufficiently to express himself in appropriate terms.

"Witch, demoness, arch-fiend that you are!" he groaned, "how came you here? Has the sea given you up once more?"

"Ah, Frank!" she said, with a soft musical accent of reproach, "I did not expect that question (to say nothing of the form in which it was put) from you of all men. Who should know how I escaped what seemed a well-nigh inevitable doom, if not the man who preserved my life?"

"I—I preserve your life?" gasped Onslow, in a bewilderment which, under the circumstances, was not unnatural.

"You forgot soon, sooner than I. I can see the whole scene yet; my horrible husband holding me closer, closer still; the steely glitter of the blade as it touched my breast; you on the rock thirty feet above, gazing with eyes that are fixed