Thanking fortune for her good luck, she seized the corners of the sheet, and with courage born of desperation, rapidly dragged her burden to the dark shrubberies that hid the disused well. Arrived there, a new difficulty confronted her. The well was boarded over. Could she succeed in removing the cover? In the darkness, beside the silent victim of her hate, Lelia knelt down and felt of the boards, moldy with age, and damp with night dew. She tried to wrench one loose. Joy--joy! It yielded; the rotten boards crumbled in her grasp. Beating them down with bare, desperate hands, they fell into the well, and she heard their low echo coming back as they splashed into the water that would soon be Gipsy’s dreary grave. One moment and all would be over and her terrible secret hidden from the sight of men down under the cold, black water. She was panting with fear and horror combined, the cold sweat of exhaustion ran down her face in streams, she was so oppressed with the weight of her sin and her danger that she felt like dying of the mere horror of the moment. There was blood upon her fair, white hands, blood on her guilty soul. She had taken life, and the horror of it would be upon her forever. She could never be happy again. This guilty secret on her soul would darken the fair face of day to her forever, would haunt her feverish slumbers, would stalk by her side throughout the world henceforth. Yet she would have to wear always a careless smile, the mask of a guilty soul. Why was she shuddering, lingering; why did she hold back from the completion of her nefarious work? Was she stricken with remorse, did she wish she could restore life to that senseless lump of clay that she had always hated with cruel hate? Oh, no, she would not do it if she could! The deed was done, and, though nature stood aghast at this outrage of conscience, she would not bring back her helpless rival to blush at Laurie’s smiles and words, and wear his ring again. With a low laugh of scorn at her momentary flinching, and a new accession of hate for her victim, Lelia stood up and caught the ends of the sheet again, dragging the body to the verge of the well. Then she gave it a vicious push with her foot. It toppled on the verge, it went over in the darkness! With the splash of the water ringing loud in her ears, Lelia fled to the house. CHAPTER XXVI. THE PALL OF DEATH. “Seeing is believing,” pertinently runs the old saw. Although Lelia was not inclined to be superstitious, she could not doubt the evidence of her own senses. When she saw the face of the dead, wild, dark, beautiful, staring in at her through the window, all her exultation fled; her heart leaped into her throat, her face went ashen white, her limbs trembled under her own weight, and that startled shriek rang from her lips: “I am haunted!”