Everard Kingsland listened to his father's huskily murmured words in boyish wonderment. What secret was he talking of? He glanced across at his mother, and saw her pale cheeks suddenly flushed and her calm eyes kindling.
"No living soul has ever heard from me what I must tell you to-night, my Everard--not even your mother. Do not leave me, Olivia. You, too, must know all that you may guard your son--that you may pity and forgive me. Perhaps I have erred in keeping any secret from you, but the truth was too horrible to tell. There have been times when the thought of it nearly drove me mad. How, then, could I tell the wife I loved--the son I idolized--this cruel and shameful thing?"
The youthful Everard looked simply bewildered--Lady Kingsland excited, expectant, flushed.
She gently wiped the clammy brow and held a reviving cordial to the livid lips.
"My dearest, do not agitate yourself," she said. "We will listen to all you have to say, and love you none the less, let it be what it will."
"My own dear wife! half the secret you know already. You remember the astrologer--the prediction?"
"Surely. You have never been the same man since that fatal night. It is of the prediction you would speak?"
"It is. I must tell my son. I must warn him of the unutterable horror to come. Oh, my boy! my boy! what will become of you when you learn your horrible doom?"
"Papa," the lad said, softly, but growing very white, "I don't understand--what horror? what doom? Tell me, and see how I will bear it. I am a Kingsland, you know, and the son of a daring race."
"That is my brave boy! Send them out of the room, Olivia--priest, doctor, Mildred, and all--then come close to me, close, close, for my voice is failing--and listen."
Lady Kingsland arose--fair and stately still as twelve years before, and eminently self-sustained in this trying hour. In half a minute she had turned out rector, physician, and daughter, and knelt again by that bed of death.
"The first part of my story, Olivia," began the dying man, "belongs to you. Years before I knew you, when I was a young, hot-headed, rashly impulsive boy, traveling in Spain, I fell in with a gang of wandering gypsies. I had been robbed and wounded by mountain brigands; those gypsies found me, took me to their tents, cared for me, cured me. But long after I was well I lingered with them, for the fairest thing the sun shone on was my black-eyed nurse, Zenith. We were both so young and so fiery-blooded, so--Ah! what need to go over the old, old grounds? There was one hour of mad, brief bliss, parting and forgetfulness. I forgot. Life was a long, idle summer holiday to me. But she never forgot--never forgave! You remember the woman, Olivia, who burst into the church on the day of our boy's christening--the woman who died in the sexton's house? That woman was Zenith--old and withered, and maddened by her wrongs--that woman who died cursing me and mine. A girl, dark and fierce, and terrible as herself, stood by her to the last, lingered at her grave to vow deathless revenge--her daughter and mine!"