This she did, at the risk of her very
soul."
"What did she do?" I asked in breathless enquiry.
"Had recourse to opium" said Cousin Bessie with a curl of her lip, and
a shrug of her honest shoulders. "And kept at it" she continued,
"until she brought herself to where she is to day!"
"Where?" I asked again, in a hushed whisper.
"To the mad-house, for she has become a raving maniac. Her last
subterfuge was too much for her, and I only hope it may not have
compromised her eternal happiness, in vainly striving to gratify a
fiendish, unreasonable wrath, and avenge imaginary wrongs. Poor thing,
her beauty was a fatal gift to her!"
With the other strange features of cousin Bessie's story still
uppermost in my mind, it is little wonder that I sank back dumfounded
and dazed, into my chair, as these final words resounded in my ears. I
could see Bayard de Beaumont, with his grave, solemn face standing
under a shadow of sorrow and gloom before me. What an infinite
sadness, his seemed to me now, when I knew all! And my dream! How
strange, how true it was. How well I knew that there was danger in
that handsome face, with its intriguing loveliness, and its mock
sincerity!
The outer door closed, while I sat silently thinking, and Louis and
Zita came in with happy, beaming faces, and their school-books piled
upon their arms. Cousin Bessie rose up, with a warning look at me, and
kissed them both, tenderly, in her usual way.
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