t have bungled less! He lay
doubled up in the chair, with a long Genoese dagger buried in his
heart, and it was I who had done it!

Gomez crawled from behind the screen, and looked first at him and
then at me with protruding eyes. He tried to speak, but his teeth
chattered.

"It is done!" I said calmly, "and you are saved, Paul, my love," I
whispered to myself. "Be a man, Gomez. We must carry it into the wood.
Lift him gently; there must be no blood here."

It took all our strength to move him, and we had to drag him, yard by
yard, down the avenue and across the road into the little wood.

My pen is weary of horrors. The memory of that hour is not to be
written about. But when he turned away I took the flowers which he had
begged for from my corsage and threw them down amongst the wet leaves.
It was my sole moment of relenting.

CHAPTER XXXII

"THE LORD OF CRUTA"

A strange figure stood on the edge of the castle cliff, looking across
the bay of Cruta to the sea. He was tall, loose jointed, and gaunt,
and the long grey beard and unkempt locks of flowing hair which
streamed behind in the breeze showed that he was an old man; but his
eyes, set back in deep hollows, and fringed with long, bushy grey
lashes, were still dark and piercing. Great passions had branded
his face with deep-set lines, but had failed to belittle him. On the
contrary, his presence, though forbidding and awesome, was full of
latent strength and dignity. To the islanders, who never mentioned
their lord's name save with bated breath and after having zealously
crossed themselves, he was the object of the most unbounded
superstition. His personality and the strangeness of his habits
appalled them. They scarcely believed him a being of the same world as
their own. The most ignorant amongst them firmly believed that the sea
obeyed his uplifted hand, and that when he spoke the thunder rolled
amongst the hills. When stories were told of the mystery and strange
isolation in which he lived, they nodded their heads and were willing
to believe everything. No one ever met him or had speech with him, for
twenty years had passed since he had issued from the castle gates. But
sometimes, most often when a storm was brewing, they could see a
tall, dark figure standing on the giddy edge of the castle wall which
overhung the sea, or walking, with slow, stately movements, up and
down the narrow foot-path at the summit of the cliff. If the moon had
risen,