CHAPTER XXV.
"LET US DIE TOGETHER."
"A gentleman to see Miss Farnham."
Nita was in her ball-dress. There were pearls and diamonds at her throat, and in the wavy masses of her hair.
"Who?" she asked carelessly.
"He did not send his card; he said to tell you a friend. He is waiting in the private parlor."
Nita thought carelessly that it was one of her many lovers come to lay heart and hand and fortune at her feet, and get the same answer she had given others:
"I have no love to give."
She had a tender heart, but it vexed her when men wooed her.
"I am no coquette. I do not encourage them. Why will they not leave me alone?" she thought impatiently.
And it was on her lips to decline to see the caller. The next moment she reflected that if she declined to-night he would come again to-morrow. The unpleasant moment was only deferred.
"I will go, I will have it over!" she exclaimed, and took up her bouquet.
"I will pretend that I am in a great hurry to start to the ball," she thought.
As she entered the parlor a man stood at an open window, breathing in the sweetness of the fair spring night. As Nita softly closed the door he came forward into the light, and stood revealed, tall, fair, handsome—Dorian Mountcastle!
A thrilling heart-cry escaped from Nita's lips:
"Dorian!"
"Nita, my love, my bride!" cried the young man, and caught her in his arms, straining her fondly to his throbbing heart.
She did not resist him. How could she forego the ecstasy of that embrace, the warm, intoxicating sweetness of that kiss? For one moment she forgot the gulf between them. Her arms crept up about his neck and held him close and tenderly—her lips clung to his. Eden came back for a few moments to earth again. He pressed the beautiful form closely to his breast.
Ah, the gladness, the madness, after believing her dead and lost to him forever on earth, to find her once again, so beautiful, so tender, and so loving, alive in his arms. He drew her at last to a seat, and whispered lovingly:
"Speak to me, my darling. Let me be sure this is no dream!"
"No dream," she murmured happily, then asked, with a smile. "How came you to find me, Dorian?"
"My love, my bride, how beautiful you are," he murmured, "and to think that I believed you dead, drowned in the cruel sea!"
She gave a convulsive start, she drew back a little from him, the joy went out of her face. But there was a mist of actual tears—tears of joy—in Dorian's eyes, and he did not note the curious change on her face.
"Ah, Nita, how I have suffered!" he cried. "When they told me you were dead, and that it was your wraith I saw on the yacht that night at Fortune's Bay, I went mad with grief. They have told me that I tried to kill myself, that I raved like a madman. But I remembered nothing for weary days until the reawakening to memory of my loss. Ah, love, pardon me these wild words, but it seemed to me that without you I was in hell—in torment without hope of release! Then Van Hise brought me abroad, but, oh, the long, long months of dark despair that followed—I will not dwell on them, my darling, now that I have found you again. And is it not strange I was so long finding out the truth? You must have written me, of course, love. Is it not strange your letters did not reach me? And all the while, my precious one, you must have been wearying for me as I for you, is it not so, sweetheart?
"In Norway one night some fellows with us were speaking of beautiful women they had met, and your name was mentioned, my darling—your old name, Nita Farnham. I was struck speechless with emotion, but Van Hise, my true friend, came to the rescue. He asked questions, he learned where you were—you and the Courtneys. The news seemed too good to be true, but Van Hise and I left the party and traveled night and day to reach London, and find out if it were really my bride given back to me from the dead. Thank God, thank God, it is true, we are reunited never to part again!"
But, to his amazement, she drew back from his proffered kiss, she recoiled a little from him, whispering in a frightened voice:
"Do not make too sure of that, Dorian!"
Mountcastle threw back his handsome head with a happy laugh.
"No coquetry, my darling, it is quite too late for that," he replied gaily. "You are all my own, you know, and now that I have found you I shall never leave you again."
His arm tightened about her waist, his eyes beamed adoring love into hers, but she trembled and gasped in deadly fear as he held her close. She loved him madly, adoringly, but her soul was as pure as a white rose-leaf, and she knew that to remain with Dorian would be deadly sin.
Oh, why had he found her here? why had they met again, only to part in despair? Better if he had gone on believing her dead, as she would, alas! be soon. No thought came to her that it might be best to confess all to Dorian, and ask him to help her out of her terrible strait. She did not know that anything but death could absolve her from her wifely vows to her husband. She understood his malignant nature well enough to know that he would pursue her to the ends of the earth if she tried to escape him. And in her stainless purity she would sooner have died than seek refuge from him in Dorian's arms.
"Oh, Dorian, Dorian, it breaks my heart to tell you," she sobbed; "but—but our marriage was all a mistake, I—I can never be your wife."
"Are you going mad, my darling? You are my wife already, you know," he replied wonderingly.
"No, Dorian, no; it was all a mistake, I tell you. I told you always that I could never marry you while my guardian lived. Captain Van Hise told me that night that he was dead, and so I consented to be married. But there was a mistake. Mr. Farnham was not dead. He lives—he claims me—so I cannot be yours."
Dorian Mountcastle laughed at her childish fears.
"His death or his life makes no difference now," he replied soothingly. "You belong to me alone, and no power on earth can take you from me. Perhaps he has some hold on your fortune. Is that what you mean? Let him have every penny, Nita. I have enough."
"Dorian, words are useless. I never can be yours. We must part."
He looked at her in amazement. He grew impatient at what he considered a silly whim.
"I do not understand all these silly fancies, Nita," he burst out angrily. "Perhaps you have ceased to love me, perhaps you have repented our marriage—is it so?"
"Yes, I repent it," she replied despairingly.
A flood of jealous rage poured like molten lava through his veins.
"You have met some one you love better?" he cried, in a voice so strange from excess of keen emotion that it did not sound like his own.
"No; ah, no, my love, my Dorian," she moaned, and suddenly flung herself at his feet. "Oh, I love you. I love you. I love you," she cried passionately, as she knelt there with upraised eyes.
Startled by her emotion, he stooped to raise her, but she resisted the effort.
"No; let me kneel here humbly at your feet and thank you for your love while I implore your pardon for my weakness," she sobbed. "Oh, Dorian, there can never be any happiness for us, dearest, while Charles Farnham lives. If he were dead—if he were only dead—we might be happy. I wish that he had died that night when he was hurt. Oh, Dorian, he holds a power over me that you do not dream of. We must part, my own dear love, we must go our ways in life alone unless–"
She paused a moment, and searched his face with eager eyes.
"Ah, Dorian, do you love me very, very much?" she sighed.
"Better than the whole world, better than my own soul!" he answered fervently.
And a low sigh of gladness heaved her breast.
"A terrible temptation has come to me, Dorian. We love each other so well that life apart would be worse than death. And yet—yet—we must part. Oh, Dorian, let us foil our malignant fate. Let us die together."
Surely she must be going mad to talk in this strange fashion when there was nothing that could come between their wedded hearts, nothing that could keep them apart. He spoke to her soothingly, tenderly, but she only became more wildly agitated.
"Do you think that I talk strangely?" she cried. "Oh, Dorian, I have heard and read of lovers who died in each other's arms rather than live apart. Let us follow their example. A drop of poison—poison that will kill easily, you know—and, locked in each other's arms, we may drift together—always together, darling—into heaven or hell, or whatever home God gives to reckless, broken-hearted lovers. What say you, Dorian? Shall it be so?"
And she gazed wildly into his horrified face.
Dorian gazed in mingled grief and horror at the beautiful girl. Surely she must be mad, he thought. Then his heart sank. Had her love turned from him in their long months of separation?
Dorian had a passionately jealous nature, and the fear of Nita's fickleness once admitted to his mind, caught fire and burned like a devouring flame. The girl's eager, beseeching eyes beheld all at once a strange change pass over his fair, handsome face, and, rising, he pushed her from him, crying out angrily:
"I understand you, Nita. In the months of our separation you have wearied of me. Do not deny it, for I will not listen to your protestations. A moment ago I thought you must be mad, now I perceive that there is method in your madness. You chafe at the tie that binds us together. You would fain be free, so you pretend this baseless fear of your guardian. Fickle heart, you have wrecked my life! I adored you, but you found my love only a weariness. Well, take your freedom! I go, never to molest you again."
The white, crouching figure lifted a pallid, woful face, and moaned:
"Oh, Dorian, will you leave me? Must I die alone?"
"Die!" the husband sneered angrily. "No, you will live to make some other fool happy a while, as you did me, then throw him over in this heartless fashion!"
All Dorian's old cynical distrust of woman's love was returning, supplemented by jealous agony too deep for words. It seemed to him that Nita was simply playing a part, pretending this unreasoning dread of her guardian's anger.
"Dorian, my love, forgive my weakness!" pleaded Nita wildly; but his eyes flashed back only a limitless wrath and scorn.
"Forgive you! no—not while life lasts! But—farewell forever!"
Then the door opened and closed—Dorian was gone in anger, and Nita was alone with her despair, her heart breaking with its heavy burden.
Slowly and wearily she dragged herself back to her room. She was glad the maid was not there to see her pale, changed face and crumpled ball-gown. She closed the door, and mechanically removed the bitter traces of tears from her face and rearranged her dress.
"For I must not stay away from the ball. That shallow Azalea would think I envied her triumph," she thought in bitter pride, and as one goes to the stake she accompanied the Courtneys to Lady Landon's ball, never telling them that Dorian had sought her out, and that she had sent him away from her, reckless and broken-hearted.
But when Dorian read of it all in the next day's papers that praised the beauty of Miss Farnham, the lovely American, and told how the Earl of Winthrop had paid her such devoted attention, he smiled in bitter mockery.
"It is just as I thought—there is a title in the case, and she means to repudiate me. American girls all run wild over coronets nowadays," he said bitterly, to Captain Van Hise, to whom he had confided the story of Nita's strange behavior.
Van Hise was frankly puzzled. He had believed in beautiful Nita, and he would not give up his faith yet. He remembered the night of the marriage, how she had refused her consent until he had told her that the old miser was dead.
"There is something very strange here. I honestly believe in her professed dread of her guardian," he said thoughtfully. "And as for the title, Dorian, you know how we were told of her coldness and indifference to all her suitors. No, she cares for no one but you, but she will let her guardian's influence wreck both your lives unless you take the matter frankly in hand. What say you? Shall we go home to New York, and have it out with the old miser? Beard the lion in his den, and find out the worst of his power. You consent? Good. We will sail this week."
Lady Landon's ball had indeed been a great success, and the Courtneys were highly elated over the admiration excited by Azalea's delicate blond beauty. Her future sister-in-law had been quite cordial, too, but in her secret heart she would have preferred the magnificent Nita with her calm manner and queenly beauty. She hinted as much to her brother, but he told her bitterly that Miss Farnham aspired to higher rank than a mere baronet, and the attentions of Lord Winthrop certainly lent color to the assertion.
The Courtneys were eager to return to the United States, whither they expected Sir George Merlin to follow them. They wanted to astonish their old set in New York with Azalea's grand match. Then, too, Mrs. Courtney did not desire to offend the old man who had ordered her with no uncertain sound to bring Nita home.
But her charge had set her face like a flint against returning. Rebellious and desperate thoughts were working in the young girl's mind. Why should she return to America? That was the question that tortured her night and day. She had resolved to die rather than live with her husband, and in a few more weeks the end of the year would come. A dreadful existence stretched before her—the price she must pay for this year of luxury—this year that might have been almost happy but for the madness of love that had come so suddenly and so irresistibly into her life.
"Oh, Dorian, Dorian, I loved you but to lose you—yet I cannot live without you—so I will end my life and its sorrows," she sobbed in the sleepless silence of the night. In her short, eventful life she had had few chances to make real friends, and she had no kins-people except old Meg Dineheart, who had declared herself on that first night at Pirate Beach to be her grandmother. For this reason Nita had protected her from arrest for her crimes, but she shuddered and grew heart-sick at the thought of sustaining any relationship to the wicked old hag, and often longed for a mother's love.
"I am alone in the world, with no right to love and happiness like other girls, and surely God will forgive me for ending my wretched life," she sobbed, and began to plan the way in which to end "life's fitful fever."
Mrs. Courtney thought it a strange whim when, instead of attending the opera one evening, Nita went to church. She knew afterward the meaning of the fancy she had combated all in vain. Nita went to church to pray and ask God's pardon for the wicked deed she was about to commit.
She smiled in mournful mockery when her worldly-minded chaperon tried to argue her out of going.
"Dear Mrs. Courtney, I can take my maid; I need not deprive you of the pleasure," she said sadly. "But as for me, I do not care for music to-night. I would rather hear some godly words and prayers."
"It is time enough for piety when you are old and gray," the woman said cynically, and Nita gave her a strange, sad glance.
"What if I do not live to grow old—if I die in my early youth?" she queried.
Mrs. Courtney shrugged her shoulders without replying; but after Nita had gone out, she said significantly to Azalea.
"I think she is suffering from a temporary aberration of the mind. You have noticed how quiet, almost morose, she has been lately. I shall take her home to her guardian without delay. There must be something wrong with her mind, the way she has carried on since she married Dorian."
But Nita had her way and went to church, and if ever a tortured soul, about to launch itself into eternity, prayed earnestly for the pity and pardon of Heaven, she did that night.
And the next morning Mrs. Courtney had a shock that she never forgot till her dying day. Nita's maid came rushing into her room with a pallid face and staring eyes.
"Oh, madam, I've found Miss Farnham dead in her bed with a bottle of poison by her side!" she almost shrieked.
CHAPTER XXVI.
"YOU SHALL KNOW THE SECRET."
In a shabby third-story room of a cheap apartment-house in New York, old Miser Farnham was sitting alone. The hideous old man was, if possible, even more forbidding than on that day in Central Park when the unhappy Nita had shuddered at the first sight of him, then yielded to his temptations, and became his reluctant bride.
The leering hideousness of his face a year ago was increased now by several livid scars received in the railway accident that had almost cost him his life, and his stooping frame was lean and gaunt, his shabby clothing hanging loosely on him.
Thin, grizzled locks straggled over his brow under the worn old hat that he wore habitually in-doors and out, and his keen, gray eyes gleamed with a diabolical light of triumph as they scanned the pages of a letter received several days previous from Mrs. Courtney.
"So she is coming home, my lovely bride," he chuckled to himself. "Coming home, and it lacks barely two weeks to the day when I shall claim her for my own. I wonder if she has come to her senses yet, and if she has concluded that life as an old man's darling with unlimited cash is better than the deep, dark river."
"More beautiful than ever, with a score of titled lovers," he read from Mrs. Courtney's sycophantic letter. "Ha, ha! to think of carrying her off from them all. To think of marrying Juan de Castro's daughter. It is a wonder he does not rise from the grave! Ugh! what if he should"—and he shrank and cowered in sudden fear, whining out—"I do not believe in ghosts."
The miser had one weakness. He believed in the supernatural, and feared it. Many a night he cowered beneath the counterpane, with his hand before his eyes, afraid to look out into the dark lest he encounter some menacing ghost from a wicked past.
The old man had reached the acme of his plans and hopes and ambitions. His marriage to Nita had secured things that else were doubtful. Let her but come now willingly or unwillingly to his arms, and the triumph of his life would be achieved.
He chuckled in fiendish glee, remembering these things, and thinking of the life he would lead with Nita, for he determined that then he would throw off his miserly habits and live in splendor.
What though all New York had sneered at Farnham, the miser, it would open its doors to the millionaire with the beautiful bride for whom titled lovers had sighed in vain, and with whom one of the richest men in New York had eloped in his yacht, creating the greatest sensation of the hour.
Yes, society would rave over her wealth and her beauty; and, by and by—if she used him well—perhaps it might be discovered that the unknown waif had descended from rich and high-born parents. Yes, this was just possible, if Nita should be kind to him. If she were not, if she were not—and he ground his teeth—woe to the heiress, her fate be on her own head.
Just then there came a swift and loud rat-tat upon his door. Visitors to Miser Farnham were things unknown. He started up, trembling. Again there sounded a loud, impatient knock. He advanced with faltering steps and threw open the door.
Before him stood two men. He had seen them both before, and as they stepped over the threshold of the room he confronted them with a snarl of hate.
"I know you both, Captain Van Hise and Mr. Mountcastle. What is your business with me?" he queried curtly.
Van Hise laughed sarcastically at this cool reception.
"Mr. Farnham, you certainly come to the point at once," he exclaimed airily, "so we will not delay what we came for. You know this gentleman, of course, as the husband of your lovely ward, Miss Farnham?"
He nodded at Dorian, and the old miser scowled.
"I have heard of the gentleman," he said angrily.
"Very well. Mr. Farnham, we have come here to ask if you have any objection to him as your ward's husband."
Dorian, with his hat in his hand, stepped in front of the old man, and gazed earnestly into his face.
What a contrast they presented, these two, Dorian in his fair beauty, and the grotesquely ugly, snarling old miser.
Van Hise's courteous question shook the old man with jealous rage, and he asked sullenly:
"What can my objections matter since he is already her husband? If the bond is a legal one, I have no power to break it."
Then Dorian spoke.
"We know that," he said in a troubled voice, yet with a frank, manly, half-appealing air. "Yet, strange to say, sir, my bride stands in such mysterious fear of your displeasure that she refuses to live with me—throws me off as if I had no claim on her loyalty."
"You have seen Nita? When?" queried Farnham, with a grin.
"In London, barely a week ago—our first interview since our marriage-night—and I sailed the next day to see you."
"To see me! Why? If she repudiates the marriage, what can I do?" insolently.
"You can remove the mysterious barrier you have placed between my darling's heart and mine. She loves me, but she fears you with a strange, unreasoning terror. She has told me that only for the report of your death she would not have married me at all. My God, sir! what is the secret of your malign power over the hapless girl?" demanded the unhappy young husband stormily.
Farnham glared back at him with a savage fury, as though he would be glad to rend him limb from limb. He put his clenched hands behind him, as though to restrain the wild beast in him.
"So you acknowledge my power over your bride? You would like to know the secret of it?" he hissed in a voice of exultant malice.
"Yes," groaned Dorian in a hollow voice.
And for a few moments there was silence. The miser took a few slow, meditative turns up and down the room. Suddenly, he turned back to Dorian, and said:
"You wish to know the secret of my power over Nita? Very well. I cannot gratify you to-night, but I will appoint a day not far distant for the important disclosure."
"But, my dear sir, my friend is positively ill with suspense, and the sooner you gratify his desire the sooner can the barrier to his happiness be removed," interposed Captain Van Hise suavely.
Farnham turned on him with a grim smile.
"You think the barrier can be removed, eh? We shall see," he said, laughing sardonically; then added: "Gladly would I gratify Mr. Mountcastle's wish to-night. In fact, I should be delighted to do so, but I am not at liberty to reveal the secret. I am bound by a solemn contract not to speak of it for one year. That year, gentlemen, expires on the tenth day of June—barely a week hence."
"We must wait, then," Dorian said, with a suppressed sigh, turning to go.
"One moment!" exclaimed the miser, lifting a detaining hand as he continued:
"When you came in I was reading a letter from Mrs. Courtney, in which she writes me that she will bring Nita home at once—in fact, will meet me at Pirate Beach the tenth of June, for the transaction of some very important business between my ward and myself. Gentlemen, I invite you also to meet me on the evening of the tenth of June, at my seaside home, Gray Gables, at Pirate Beach. You shall hear then, from Nita's own lips, the story of the barrier between your hearts, and then you can judge better if it be removable. Will you come?"
"We will come," they both answered in a breath, and bowed themselves out, full of wonder and consternation, for the old miser's manner had impressed them both with grim forebodings.
The tide was coming in with its low, murmurous monotone, washing the silvery sands at Pirate Beach, and the moon was rising full-orbed and majestic, lighting the twilight scene into weird beauty.
It was the tenth of June, the fatal anniversary of Nita's marriage to the old miser—the anniversary of her meeting with Dorian, the one love of her life.
Up at Gray Gables lights flashed from all the windows, and rumor said that the travelers had come home. Far up the beach old Meg Dineheart was pacing back and forth, watching for her son's bark, that had been absent several months.
"Will Jack ever come home again, I wonder? It seems a year since he went," she muttered, with a touch of forlornness, for the one affection of her lonely life was big, burly Jack, her handsome, wicked son. She had been expecting him now for several days, and was growing uneasy and impatient at his strange delay. Suddenly, a rude hand gripped her shoulder, and whirled her around face to face with Farnham.
"Good evening, old lady! 'Pon my soul, you look quite romantic star-gazing here alone," he exclaimed gibingly.
"So you're back, you devil!" she hissed. "What fiend's errand are you on now, I wonder?"
"To ask you to congratulate me on my success in achieving the great ambition of my life, Meg."
"I don't know what you mean, Farnham."
"No, but I am here to tell you that the propitious fates have brought to me an hour of glorious triumph, and rewarded all my schemings with success. Come inside the house, and let me tell you the sequel of the story you heard one year ago to-night."
She turned toward the cabin, the old miser following closely, and neither noticed that Jack Dineheart's trim fishing-boat had come into sight, and was riding into anchor close to shore. When the door had closed upon the wicked pair of plotters, the sailor rowed over to land in a tiny little boat, and sprang lightly up the beach toward his mother's cabin.
"Poor old soul, I wonder if she's yet alive," he pondered.
And, stepping lightly to the smoke-grimed old window of the cabin, he peered through with bated breath for a sight of old Meg. He recoiled with a stifled cry just as Nita had done a year ago that night, for the self-same sight met his startled eyes.
Old Meg and Miser Farnham were seated by a table in earnest conversation.
"Humph! hatching some new mischief, I suppose," muttered Jack, bending his ear to a convenient knot-hole in order to catch their words.
The sea boomed on the shore, the moonlight silvered the waves, the wind sighed eerily round the old cabin, and the words that Jack Dineheart heard that hour paved the way for a fateful tragedy.
"You say that Nita has come home to Gray Gables, yet how can that be?" cried Meg. "It was only yesterday that I was up there, and Mrs. Hill, the old housekeeper, was wringing her hands and crying because she had seen in a New York paper several days old that Nita had killed herself in a London hotel by taking poison."
"It was true—and false," answered Farnham angrily. "I had a letter from Mrs. Courtney telling me all about it. She drank laudanum, and it threw her into a deep sleep. At first they thought she was dead, but a physician succeeded in rousing and restoring her to life, although she has been in a strange, dazed state ever since, and it is thought that she may never recover from the effects of the drug she used. But Mrs. Courtney telegraphed me this morning that they had arrived in New York from Europe, and would proceed immediately to Gray Gables."
Old Meg listened with keen interest to every word, then exclaimed:
"If Nita had committed suicide in the old, wretched days when she was my hard-worked slave I should not have wondered at it, but it puzzles me that she should attempt it now when she is rich and happy as old Farnham's ward."
With a gulp of rage he answered:
"I will tell you why she wished to die. She was married to a man she hated so much that she would die rather than live with him."
"Hated that handsome swell that she eloped with? I don't believe it. The girl loved the very ground he walked on!" cried Meg.
"Yes, she loved Dorian Mountcastle, but he was not her husband," answered the old man. "Listen, Meg, to one of the strangest stories you ever heard."
And, slowly, and with infinite gusto, as though he enjoyed the telling, he related to her the story of that day in Central Park when he had wooed and won beautiful Nita for his reluctant bride. She listened like one turned to stone; not a syllable escaped her, and he ended with ghoulish glee.
"As her husband all of Juan de Castro's wealth is legally mine. I can take open possession of it now, and if questions should be asked I can point to my bride, his daughter, as the lawful heiress."
She started from her trance of silence muttering hoarsely:
"You—you promised to marry me when you took possession of the spoil."
"Be patient, Meg. She will not live long, you ought to know that well. You have known some people who hated me, and then died mysteriously, did they not? Well, this girl, this dark-eyed beauty, she loathes me, and some day—not far distant, perhaps—I shall take deadly revenge for her scorn. But, first, to force her to my arms, to humble her haughty spirit, and break her proud heart. Then your turn will come, Meg. Be patient and wait."
"You are deceiving me, Farnham. You love the daughter as you loved the mother. You will never kill Juanita de Castro when she looks at you with her mother's eyes. You will grovel at her feet for a word of kindness, and Jack and I—Jack, your son, for whose sake I crave the treasure—we will be thrust aside, forgotten! No, no, you traitor, we will not," she rose up and shook her clawlike hands in his face, "no, we will not be trodden upon! We will have revenge, Jack and I will betray you."
He grasped and shook her violently till the breath was almost out of her body, then flung her roughly back into her seat.
"You cat who did my bidding—you and your villainous son—how dare you threaten me? One word from me and you both would swing from a scaffold!" he hissed furiously. "Hold your cursed tongue, or beware of my vengeance!" and with an oath he left the house and took his way toward Gray Gables.
Meg crouched like one dazed in a chair where her assailant had flung her, but Jack Dineheart did not go in to see if she were dead or alive. He followed the miser almost to the gate of Gray Gables with a stealthy, sullen stride, then, suddenly, flung himself on him with resistless fury, and bore him down to the ground.
"Oh, you wretch, you devil, to have married her, the girl you promised in her bonny childhood should be mine, my wife! Oh, you fiend, to take her from me! But I will save poor Nita and avenge myself. Here at the gates of fancied bliss, you die."