CHAPTER XLIV.
A TERRIBLE DEED!
Amber flew to her room to get ready for her trip to Bonnycastle. Her brain was on fire, she was on the verge of insanity.
She put her hand to her brow and stood wondering what she should do next.
“My fate hangs trembling in the balance of the next hour,” she muttered, hoarsely. “Shall I remain quiescent, and let them all triumph over me? or shall I strike one fatal blow and achieve my own happiness? Bah! who could hesitate in such an hour? Self-preservation is the first law of nature.”
Thought came in rushing waves, and all in an instant her plans were formed.
She dressed herself very richly and carefully for a drive, and packed a small hand-satchel with all of her jewelry, and a change of clothing. Then she slipped into her glove a tiny package containing a white powder, muttering:
“How fortunate for me that I contemplated suicide when I first lost the hope of Cecil Grant’s love, and bought this arsenic in Washington. It will serve a better purpose now.”
She laughed a hollow, mirthless laugh, blood-curdling in its malice, and leaving the satchel just within the door, ran down stairs.
She gave an order for her phaeton to be brought immediately, and returned to her grandfather’s room.
The old man lay upon the bed in a slight doze, looking aged and pitiful in his gray hairs and wrinkles, but no pity stirred the heart of the girl who hated him now with a deadly hate.
Leaning over the table, with her back to the bed, she emptied into his wine-glass the white powder hidden in her dainty glove, her eyes flashing with a resolute glare.
Then she turned back to the bed and touched her victim gently. He started up in a dazed fashion, leaning on his elbow.
“Amber, is that you? How you startled me! I must have been asleep.”
“I am sorry that I startled you; but I came to tell you that I am ready to go for Cecil,” sweetly.
“Ah, yes; bring him quickly, Amber. Tell him it is important,” he sighed, wearily.
“Grandpapa, how faint your voice sounds, and how terribly ill you look! Let me give you some wine,” and the beautiful fiend poured the ruby liquid upon the white powder in the glass, furtively shook it up, and presented it with a faltering hand, although she was determined to playfully force it down his throat if he refused it.
But the unsuspecting judge took the glass in his hand, and drained a third of its contents before he paused, and said:
“Ugh! it is very strong! It burns my throat!”
“But it will make you strong. Drink it all, grandpapa,” pleaded Amber, solicitously.
“I will—presently,” and he leaned back on the pillow, still holding the wine in his hand.
She waited, lingered, but he dallied with the glass, almost driving her wild with impatience.
Eager to be gone, and believing that he had already taken a fatal dose, she said, presently:
“May I set down the glass for you and go, grandpapa?”
“Yes, go; but never mind the wine. I will sip it at my leisure,” he answered; and in her impatience she took him at his word, and flitted out with a ghastly smile, thinking:
“He will finish it, every drop, before he puts it down, and probably die before any one else comes into the room. There will be no suspicion of the cause of death, and they will call it heart failure.”
In the hall she encountered a maid-servant, and said carelessly:
“Hattie, go up stairs and bring down the little satchel inside my door. I am taking my dahlia silk to the village to be altered.”
Five minutes later she was driving along the road to the post-office, a dazzling vision that every one turned out to see in her elegant attire and natty equipage.
Half a score of obsequious young men darted out of the post-office to hand her from her carriage, and her dazzling smile thrilled them all day like wine.
She went past them into the office, but the Camden box was empty, the mail having already been taken.
“I see there is nothing for us, but I will take the Grant mail, if you please. I shall be driving past Mr. Grant’s office, and can save him the trouble of walking here,” she said to the postmaster, with her brilliant smile that almost turned his head.
“There is only one letter. It is for Mr. Grant,” he replied, taking it from Cecil’s box and handing it to the beauty with his most obsequious bow.
“I thank you,” she answered, as she grasped the treasure, and flitted out with a swish of silk and a waft of perfume that lingered all day in the minds of the admiring hangers-on at the village post-office.