Page:The Father Confessor, Stories of Danger and Death.djvu/259

Rh through together. The hope that he had half forgotten or pardoned his rival, now that he knew he was no living man, came often to his wife. She wondered at his devotion to his work, and was startled one day by a friend asking if her husband was going away, as he was settling his affairs, and asked her what it meant.

"Perhaps he is going abroad," she said, but did not know. She felt she would not care much; he was so fierce, so strange; his eyes glared like a wolfs beneath his dark brows; she went in fear of him always.

She knew he was meditating something; it was like watching a tiger crouched to spring.

And yet she half realized his bestial rage was not for her, that she was thrust aside while he stood to some stronger foe—for Hugh, perhaps, but how could he reach him?

When at last the blow fell, it almost killed her. She went up to his room and found him lying upon the bed dead.

He lay there fully dressed, his clothes and the bed red with his blood—he had cut his throat from ear to ear. Her shrieks brought the servants around her, a doctor was sent for, and her father, but nothing could be done.