"You threw
aside my ring. What is this? Whose portrait have you there?
Let me see it."
"You forget yourself again," she said, drawing herself haughtily
away. "I have no account to render to you of my friends."
"I will see who is there!" he cried, beside himself with angry
rage. "Perhaps I shall know then why you wish to be freed from
me. Whose face is lying near your heart? Let me see. If it is
that of any one who has outwitted me, I will throw it into the
depths of the lake."
"You shall not see it," she said, raising her hand, and clasping
the little locket tightly. "I am not afraid, Hugh Fernely. You
will never use violence to me."
But the hot anger leaped up in his heart; he was mad with cruel
jealousy and rage, and tried to snatch the locket from her. She
defended it, holding it tightly clasped in one hand, while with
the other she tried to free herself from his grasp.
It will never be know how that fatal accident happened. Men will
never know whether the hapless girl fell, or whether Hugh
Fernely, in his mad rage, flung her into the lake. There was a
startled scream that rang through the clear air, a heavy fall, a
splash amid the waters of the lake! There was one awful,
despairing glance from a pale, horror-stricken face, and then the
waters closed, the ripples spread over the broad surface, and the
sleeping lilies trembled for a few minutes, and then lay still
again! Once, and once only, a woman's white hand, thrown up, as
it were, in agonizing supplication, cleft the dark water, and
then all was over; the wind blew the ripples more strongly; they
washed upon the grass, and the stir of the deep waters subsided!
Hugh Fernely did not plunge into the lake after Beatrice--it was
too late to save her; still, he might have tried.
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