Mr. Beamish was about to deliver an allocution of reproof to them in
equal shares, being entirely unsuspicious of any other reason for the
alarum than this palpable outbreak of a rivalry that he would have
inclined to attribute to the charms of Chloe, when the house-door swung
wide for them to enter, and the landlady of the house, holding clasped
hands at full stretch, implored them to run up to the poor lady: 'Oh,
she's dead; she's dead, dead!'
Caseldy rushed past her.
'How, dead! good woman?' Mr. Beamish questioned her most incredulously,
half-smiling.
She answered among her moans: 'Dead by the neck; off the door--Oh!'
Young Camwell pressed his forehead, with a call on his Maker's name. As
they reached the landing upstairs, Caseldy came out of the sitting-room.
'Which?' said Camwell to the speaking of his face.
'She !' said the other.
'The duchess?' Mr. Beamish exclaimed.
But Camwell walked into the room. He had nothing to ask after that
reply.
The figure stretched along the floor was covered with a sheet. The young
man fell at his length beside it, and his face was downward.
Mr. Beamish relates: 'To this day, when I write at an interval of fifteen
years, I have the tragic ague of that hour in my blood, and I behold the
shrouded form of the most admirable of women, whose heart was broken by a
faithless man ere she devoted her wreck of life to arrest one weaker than
herself on the descent to perdition.
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