Page:The Fate of Fenella (1892).djvu/94

 last Lord Francis roused himself from his long stupor.

"What had happened?" he thought confusedly. "Had he been ill? Had he done anything?"

A hideous dread seized and appalled him. In those brief hours he seemed to have lived a lifetime.

"Why did I not kill him?" he muttered, lifting his haggard young face up to the faint rose light that filtered through the curtains. "Kill him! aye, and in her arms—kill him and her too! Heaven!" a strange, hoarse laugh escaped him.

"I shall go mad if I stay here—under the same roof with them."

He began to move about confusedly, putting things together, and tossing his clothes into his portmanteau. He was possessed but by one idea—to leave a place made hateful by this discovery, to get away from these men and women, with their jeering tongues and malicious smiles, who all guessed or knew of his disgrace. It had been so public, so shameless. She had summoned this man to her side. She had flaunted her preference for him before his very face, and now—

He cursed her in his heart, as still, with fevered haste and strange, impetuous movements, he gathered together his few possessions. Then he locked his box and wrote a hurried note to the manager of the hotel, inclosing a check and stat-