Alas for that one triumphant night of Felise Herbert. It was succeeded by a day of disappointment.

It was scarcely noon before she heard that Colonel Carlyle had caused the arrest of Leslie Dane upon the charge of murdering Mr. Arnold, and that he had been committed to prison to await a requisition from the governor of New Jersey, in which State the deed had been committed. Mrs. Arnold entering her room in a tremor of nervous agitation, found her pacing the floor, wildly gesticulating, and muttering to herself, in terms of the fiercest denunciation, anathemas against Colonel Carlyle.

"The miserable old dotard!" she exclaimed, furiously. "To think that his madness should have carried him to such lengths! Just when I felt so sure of my revenge he has balked me of my satisfaction and imperiled my safety by his jealous madness!"

"Felise, you have heard all, then?" exclaimed Mrs. Arnold, anxiously.

Felise turned her blazing dark eyes toward her mother, and Mrs. Arnold shuddered.

"All, all!" she echoed passionately; "ill news flies apace!"

"Felise, I feared this!" exclaimed Mrs. Arnold. "You were over-confident last night. Who could tell what form that old man's madness would take?"

"Who, indeed!" cried her daughter passionately. "And yet my theory seemed so plausible—who could have dreamed of its failure? But for him all would have gone as I planned it! But you cannot dream, mother, what that besotted old villain had the audacity to do!"

"It is not possible he suspected your complicity in the affair, Felise—he has taken no steps against us?" wildly questioned the mother as she sank into a chair half-fainting with terror.

"No, no, he has not done that, mother—his deviltry took another form."

"What, then, my dear? Oh! Felise, do sit down and calm yourself, and let us talk this matter over quietly," implored Mrs. Arnold anxiously.

"Calm myself—ha, ha, ha, when the blood in my veins has turned to molten fire, and is burning me to ashes! You are an iceberg, mother, with your cold words and calm looks, but you cannot put out the fire that is raging within me! Surely I must be wholly my father's child! There is nothing of you about me—nothing!"

"Yes, she is like her father—the more pity! For there was madness in his blood," Mrs. Arnold muttered inaudibly; "and I, oh! God—all my life I have fostered her evil passions, in my greed of gold, until now, when her reason totters on the brink of insanity. Oh! that I might undo my part in this fearful tragedy, and save her from the gulf that yawns beneath her feet!"

Overcome by her late remorse and terrible forebodings, she hid her face in her hands while a nervous trembling seized upon her from head to foot. Felise paused in her frenzied walk and eyed her curiously.

[Pg 108]

"Mother, are you turning coward in the face of danger?" she asked, with a ring of contempt in her voice.

There was no reply. The bowed face still rested on the trembling hands, the form still shook with nervous terror. Something in the weakness and forlornness of that drooping attitude in the mother who had subordinated everything else to her daughter's welfare, struck like a chill upon Felise, and partially tamed the devil raging within her. She spoke in a gentler tone:

"Rouse yourself, mother. See! I have quite sobered down, and am ready to discuss the matter as calmly and dispassionately as you could wish. Ask what you please, and I will answer."

Mrs. Arnold looked up, taking new heart as she saw that Felise still retained the power to subdue her fiery passions.

"Then tell me, dear, what else Colonel Carlyle has done besides causing Leslie Dane's arrest," said he............