Then Lady Kirwan noticed something strange in the young man's face. The color had all ebbed from it; it was white with a horrid, ghastly whiteness, that absolutely colorless white one sees on the under side of a turbot or a sole. "Good gracious!" she said, with slightly faltering voice. "Are you ill, Tom? Why, what is the matter? Has anything happened?" The young man's brain was whirling. Lady Kirwan's sudden and unexpected appearance had driven all his plans and self-control to the winds. He shook with fear and agitation. He tried to speak twice, but the words rattled in his mouth with a hollow sound. The current of fear ran from him to the tall and gracious dame who stood before him, and flashed backwards and forwards between the two like a shuttle--in the loom of Fate. "What is it?" she said, in a high-pitched voice. "Tell me at once!" As she spoke the hall suddenly became filled with silent servants--servants whose faces were covered with tears, and who stood trembling around the vast, luxurious place. The dame's eyes swept round in one swift survey. Then, suddenly, she drew herself to her full height. "Where is Augustus?" she said in a low, vibrating voice that thrilled the heart of every person there with pain. "Where is my husband?" "Sir Augustus, my dear Lady Kirwan," Sir Thomas began to gasp, with tears running down his cheeks--"Sir Augustus is very ill; but----" He got no further, Lady Kirwan began to move quickly, as if some dread instinct had told her the truth, towards the library door. "No, no, dear Lady Kirwan," Sir Thomas said--"don't go!" She brushed him aside as if he had been a straw in her path, and the terrified group of people saw her burst upon the great white-painted door which led to the chamber of death. There was a silence, an agonized silence of several seconds, and then what all expected and waited for came. A terrible cry of anguish pealed out into the house, a cry so wild and despairing that the very walls seemed to shudder in fearful sympathy. A cry, repeated thrice, and then a choking gurgle, which in its turn gave way to a deep contralto voice of menace. Inside the library Lady Kirwan reeled by the long table upon which the still form of the man she loved lay hushed for ever in death. One arm was thrown around the rigid, waxen face, the left was outstretched with accusing finger, and pointing at Joseph the evangelist. "It is you!" the terrible voice pealed out. "It is you, false prophet, liar, murderer, who have brought a good man to his end! It was you who killed my dear, dear nephew Lluellyn upon the hills of our race! It is you--who have come into a happy household with lying wiles and sneers and signs and tokens of your master Satan, whom you serve--who have murdered my beloved! May the curse of God rest upon you! May you wither and die and go to your own place and your own master--you, who have killed my dear one!"