Page:The Father Confessor, Stories of Danger and Death.djvu/260

250 For three days they "waked" him, and she saw his face, white and cold before her, with a triumphant smile upon its lips—the same strange smile his brother had upon his mouth, lying dead in Paris. She knelt by the bed for three days, praying for forgiveness, and at last the face was hidden away and was seen no more.

The night it went she crept weary into the room, weeping her heart out on the bed where the corpse had lain; did she not love him best after all! Poor weak creature! the wills of two strong men had governed her heart, and torn it between them! In the midst of her crying, she heard a noise in the passage outside the door, as of people running; she started to her feet, her tortured nerves anticipating some new shock; she heard a scuffle at the door, and the weight of a heavy body thrown against it Some one was fighting outside. Her heart swelled with anger; what scandal was this, who was quarrelling, in the widowed home, before the dead was cold in his grave? She went forward to open the door, then shrank back as if afraid. There was murder being done outside; she heard the