"Not his wife--his sister," another conjectured.

"Neither," a third said. "I know her. It's Mrs. Hugh Darcy, his late uncle's adopted daughter. He has no sister, and his wife left him long ago."

It is doubtful if she heard; it is certain she never heeded. All she felt or knew was that Laurence Thorndyke lay yonder on the blood-stained flags, dying hard. She was kneeling beside him--a bleeding, mangled heap, crushed almost out of semblance of humanity.

"Laurence! Laurence!" she gasped. "Oh, Heaven! not dead! not dead!"

"Not dead, madam," a pitying voice answered--"not dead yet. I am a physician, and I tell you so. He is insensible at present, but consciousness will return. You know him?"

"Know him!" She looked into the grave, compassionate face with dazed eyes. "Know Laurence Thorndyke? What is it you intend doing with him?"

she asked.

The medical man shrugged his shoulders.

"Send him to Bellevue, I suppose, unless some friend steps forward and takes charge of him. They won't want him there"--signifying the boarding-house--"again. And if he is sent to a hospital, I wouldn't give much for his chances of life."

"There is still a chance, then?"

"Well--you know the formula, 'while there's life there's hope.' With the best of care, and nursing, and medical aid, there may be one chance in a hundred for him. With hospital care and attendance, there's not a shadow."

Then for the space of five seconds a pause fell. The city street, the gaping, curious crowd around her faded away, and there arose before Norine a far different and never-to-be-forgotten picture--a desolate autumn evening; a gray, complaining sea, creeping up on its gray sands, a low, fast-drifting sky lying over it, and on the shore a girl standing, reading a few brief lines in Laurence Thorndyke's writing--lines that branded her as a thing of sin and shame for life--that broke her heart as she read. And now--her enemy lay here at her mercy. Why should she lift a finger to save him? Why not let him go to the hospital and take his chance? All that man can do to ruin a woman, body and soul, he had done--why should she lift a finger to save him now?

She thought all this in a moment of time. The tempter stood at her side and rekindled all the pain, and hatred and horror of him. Then her eyes fell upon the crushed, bleeding, senseless form at her feet, and she turned from the dark thoughts within her with horror of herself.

"Well, madam?" the voice of the medical man said, a little impatiently, "how is it to be? You evidently know this unfortunate young man--shall he be removed to the hospital, or--"

"To my house!" She rose suddenly, her self possession returning. "And I must beg of you to accompany him there. No efforts must be spared to restore him. Carry him to the carriage at once."

Men came forward, and the insensible figure was gently lifted, carried to the carriage, and laid upon the cushions.

Norine entered, and took his head in her lap. The doctor followed.

"Home!" she said to the coachman, and they drove slowly back, through the busy streets, to the quiet, red-brick mansion that for years had been Laurence Thorndyke's home.

"How should she tell Helen?" All the way that thought filled Norine.

Through her the wife had left the husband. Was Death here to separate them still more effectually? Would he ever have come to this but for her? In some way did not this horror lie at her door? In all the years that were to come could she ever atone for the wickedness she had done.

As she sat here she felt as though she were a murderess. And once she had loved this man--passionately loved him. "Fiercest love makes fiercest hate." He had cast off that love with scorn, she had vowed revenge, and verily she had had it! Of fortune, of wife and child, and now of life, it might be, she seemed to have robbed him.

"Oh, forgive me my sin!" her whole stricken soul cried out.

They reached the house, the coachman and the physician lifted the still senseless man and carried him to an upper chamber. Summoning her housekeeper to their aid, Norine left them and went in search of the wounded man's wife.

She found her in her own room lying listlessly, wearily, as usual, upon a sofa, gazing with tired, hopeless eyes at the fire, while her little children played about her. Kneeling before her, her face bowed upon the pillows, her tears falling, her voice broken and choked, Norine told the story she had come to tell. In the room above her husband lay, injured it might be unto death.

"If he dies," Norine said, her voice still husky, her face still hidden.

"I shall feel, all my life-long, as though I were his murderess. If he dies, how shall I answer to Heaven and to you for the work I have done?"

Helen Thorndyke had arisen and stood holding by the sofa for support, an awful ghastliness on her face, an awful horror in her eyes. Dying!

Laurence dying! and like this!

"Let me go to him!" she said, hoarsely, going blindly forward. "_You_ are not to blame--he wronged you beyond all forgiveness, but I was his wife and I deserted him. The blame is mine--all mine."

She made her way to the room where they had laid him. On the threshold she paused, faint almost unto death. The yellow, wintry sunshine slanted in and filled the chamber. Upon the white bed he lay, rigid and ghastly.

They had washed away the clotted blood, and the face was entirely uninjured. Worn, haggard, awfully corpse-like, it lay upon the pillows, the golden, sparkling sunshine streaming across it.

"Laurence! Laurence! Laurence!"

At that anguished cry of love and agony, all fell back before the wife.

She had crossed the room, she had fallen on her knees by the bedside, she had clasped the lifeless figure in her arms, her tears and kisses raining upon the still rigid face. All was forgotten, all forgiven--the bitter wrongs he had done her. Nothing remained but the truth that she loved him still, that he was her husband, and that he lay here before her--dying.

Dying! No need to look twice in the physician's sombre countenance to see that.

"He will not live an hour," he said, in answer to Norine's agonized asking look; "it is doubtful whether he will return to consciousness at all. There is concussion of the brain, and several internal injuries--any one enough to prove his death. Mortal aid is unavailing here."

Dying! Yes, even to Norine's own inexperienced eyes the dreadful seal was yonder on the face among the pillows. His wife's arm encircled his neck, her face was hidden on his bosom, a dull, dumb, moaning sound coming from her lips. He lay there rigid--as if dead already--all unconscious of that last agonized embrace of love, and forgiveness, and remorse.

The doctor left the room, waiting without in case his services should be needed. Norine dispatched a messenger to Mr. Gilbert, another for a clergyman. He might return to reason, if only for a moment before the spirit passed away.

"He cannot--he _cannot_ die like this!" she cried out, wringing her hands in her pain. "It is too dreadful!"

The doctor shook his head.

"Dreadful indeed. But 'the way of the transgressor is hard.' He will never speak on earth again."

Richard Gilbert came, almost as pale as the pale remorseful woman who met him. It was the physician who encountered and told him the story first. He entered the room. Norine stood leaning against the foot of the bed. Helen still knelt, holding her dying husband in her arms, her face still hidden on his breast. One look told him that the awful change was already at hand.

And so, with the three he had wronged most on earth around him, Laurence Thorndyke lay dying. Out of the hearts of the three all memory of those wrongs had gone, only a great awe and sorrow left. For Norine, as she stood there, the old days came back--the days that had been the most blessed of her life, when she had given him her whole heart, and fancied she had won his in return. Old thoughts, old memories returned, until her heart was full to breaking; and she hid her face in her hands, with sobs almost as bitter as the wife's own.

The moments wore on--profound silence reigned through the house. Once doctor and clergyman stole in together, glanced at the prostrate man, glanced at each other, and drew back. Priest and physician were alike powerless here. The creeping shadow that goes before was upon that ghastly face already. Death was in the midst of them. Without opening his eyes a sudden tremor ran through the senseless form from head to foot. Helen lifted her awe-struck face. That tremor shook him for a moment as though the soul were forcibly rending its way from the body.

Then he stretched out his limbs and lay still.

CHAPTER XXIII.

"JENNIE KISSED ME."

It is a bright but chilly May day. In the luxurious sitting-room of Mrs.

Liston-Darcy a coal fire is burning, and in a purple arm-chair before this genial fire Mrs. Darcy sits.

She is looking very handsome as she sits here, the brilliant morning sunshine streaming across her dusk beauty and loosely-rippling hair--very handsome in her rose-pink wrapper, with a soft drift of lace about the slim throat and wrists. Very handsome, and yet a trifle out of sorts, too; for the dark, slender brows are contracted, and the brown, luminous eyes gaze sombrely enough into the depths of the fire. She sits looping and unlooping in a nervous sort of restlessness the cord and tassels that bind her slender waist, one slippered foot beating an impatient tattoo on the hassock, her lips compressed in deep and unpleasant thought. About the room, great trunks half-packed stand; in the wardrobe adjoining, her maid is busily folding away dresses.

Evidently an exodus is at hand.

"I cannot go--I shall not go until I see him," she is thinking; "it is only what I have richly earned, what my treachery of the past deserves, but it is none the less hard to bear. I cast off his love once, trampled his heart under my feet; he would be less than man to offer it again to one so treacherous and unworthy. And Nellie is an angel--who can wonder that he loves her? It is my just punishment when I have learned how good, how tender, how noble he is, to see her win him from me--when I have learned to love him with my whole heart, to see him give his to her--to lose him in my turn."