“You are ill, Dianthe. What seems to be your trouble? I am told that you see spirits. May I ask if they wear the dress of African explorers?”
It had come to this unhappy state between them.
“Aubrey,” replied the girl in a calm, dispassionate tone, “Aubrey, at this very hour in this room, as I lay here, not sleeping, nor disposed to sleep, there where you stand, stood a lovely woman; I have seen her thus once before. She neither looked at me nor spoke, but walked to the table, opened the Bible, stooped over it a while, seeming to write, then seemed to sink, just as she rose, and disappeared. Examine the book, and tell me, is that fancy?”
Crossing the room, Aubrey gazed steadfastly at the open book. It was the old family Bible, and the heavy clasps had grown stiff and rusty. It was familiar to him, and intimately associated with his life-history. There on the open page were ink lines underscoring the twelfth chapter of Luke: “For there is nothing covered that shall not be revealed, neither hid that shall not be known.” At the end of this passage was written the one word “Nina.”
Without a comment, but with anxious brows, Aubrey returned to his wife’s couch, stooped and impressed several kisses on her impassive face. Then he left the room.
Dianthe lay in long and silent meditation. Servants came and went noiselessly. She would have no candles. The storm ceased; the moon came forth and flooding the landscape, shone through the windows upon the lonely watcher. Dianthe’s restlessness was soothed, and she began tracing the shadows on the carpet and weaving them into fantastic images of imagination. What breaks her reverie? The moonlight gleams on something white and square; it is a letter. She left the couch and picked it up. Just then a maid entered with a light, and she glanced at the envelope. It bore the African postmark! She paused. Then as the girl left the room, she slipped the letter from the envelope and read:
“Master Aubrey—I write to inform you that I have not been able to comply with your wishes. Twice I have trapped Dr. Briggs, but he has escaped miraculously from my hands. I shall not fail the third time. The expedition will leave for Meroe next week, and then something will surely happen. I have suppressed all letters, according to your orders, and both men are feeling exceedingly blue. Kindly put that first payment on the five thousand dollars to my sister’s credit in a Baltimore bank, and let her have the bank book. Next mail you may expect something definite.
Aubrey Livingston had gone to an adjoining city on business, and would be absent three or four days.
That night Dianthe spent in his library behind locked doors, and all about her lay open letters—letters addressed to her, and full of love and tenderness, detailing Reuel’s travels and minutely describing every part of his work.
Still daylight found her at her work. Then she quitted it, closed up the desk, tied up the letters, replaced them, left the room, and returned to her boudoir to think. Her brain was in a giddy whirl, and but one thought stood out clearly in her burning brain. Her thoughts took shape in the one word “Reuel,” and by her side stood again the form of the pale, lovely mulattress, her long black curls enveloping her like a veil. One moment—the next the room was vacant save for herself.
Reuel was living, and she a bigamist—another’s wife! made so by fraud and deceit. The poor overwrought brain was working like a machine now—throbbing, throbbing, throbbing. To see him, hear his voice—this would be enough. Then came the thought—lost to her, or rather she to him—and how? By the plans of his would-be murderer. O, horrible, inhuman wretch! He had stolen her by false tales, and then had polluted her existence by the breath of murder. Murder! What was murder? She paused and gasped for breath; then come the trembling thought, “Would he were dead!”
He would return and discover the opening of the letters. “O, that he were dead!”
She wandered about the grounds in the cold sunshine, burning with fever, and wild with a brain distraught. She wished the trees were living creatures and would fall and crush him. The winds in their fury, would they but kill him! O, would not something aid her? At last she sat down, out of breath with her wanderings and wearied by the tumult within her breast. So it went all day; the very heavens beckoned her to commit a deed of horror. She slept and dreamed of shapeless, nameless things that lurked and skulked in hidden chambers, waiting the signal to come forth. She woke and slept no more. She turned and turned the remainder of the night; her poor warped faculties recalled the stories she had read of Cenci, the Borgias, and even the Hebrew Judith. And then she thought of Reuel, and the things he had told her on many an idle day, of the properties of medicine, and how in curiosity she had fingered his retorts used in experiments. And he had told her she was apt, and he would teach her many things of his mysterious profession. And as she thought and speculated, suddenly something whispered, as it were, a name—heard but once—in her ear. It was the name of a poison so subtle in its action as to defy detection save by one versed in its use. With a shudder she threw the thought from her, and rose from her couch.
We know we’re tempted. The world is full of precedents, the air with impulses, society with men and spirit tempters. But what invites sin? Is it not a something within ourselves?
