Page:The Mystery of Madeline Le Blanc (1900).djvu/65

Rh respect to the situation of the grave. He counted his steps to the number that he had calculated would make about three hundred yards, and stopped to listen. Everything was as silent as the dead sleeping in their tombs. He turned and ascended directly toward the cemetery, which, if his calculations had been accurate, he would reach about the place of the newly-made grave. If a light could have been thrown into that face as it climbed the hill, there would have been seen a combination of expressions, including joy and expectation, tinctured with the nervous uncertainty of a criminal and the strength of something almost superhuman. "Once," he was thinking, as he climbed, "I could have loved such a girl. I will be good enough to her, but she shall be mine. I will enjoy what was denied my youth; and the murderers of Louis XVI. shall pay me in this generation. My science—if it fail not! Madeline! I will teach you to serve a soldier of a king," and then he called himself a fool. " Ten chances to one she is dead. Can I revive her? I fear there was too much carbon. My science—my science!"