The Midnight Queen - Page 106/177

Sir Norman stood paralyzed. She half raised herself on her elbow,

drew the dagger from the wound, and a great jet of blood shot up and

crimsoned her hands. She did not faint--there seemed to be a deathless

energy within her that chained life strongly in its place--she only

pressed both hands hard over the wound, and looked mournfully and

reproachfully up in his face. Those beautiful, sad, solemn dyes, void of

everything savage and fierce, were truly Leoline's eyes now.

Through all his first shock of horror, another thing dawned on his

mind; he had looked on this scene before. It was the second view in La

Masque's caldron, and but one remained to be verified.

The next instant, he was down on his knees in a paroxysm of grief and

despair.

"What have I done? what have I done?" was his cry.

"Listen!" she said, faintly raising one finger. "Do you hear that?"

Distant steps were echoing along the passage. Yes; he heard them, and

knew what they were.

"They are coming to lead you to death!" she said, with some of her

old fire; "but I will baffle them yet. Take that lamp--go to the wall

yonder, and in that corner, near the floor, you will see a small iron

ring. Pull it--it does not require much force--and you will find an

opening leading through another vault; at the end there is a broken

flight of stairs, mount them, and you will find yourself in the same

place from which you fell. Fly, fly! There is not a second to lose!"

"How can I fly? how can I leave you dying here?"

"I am not dying!" she wildly cried, lifting both hands from the wound to

push him away, while the blood flowed over the floor. "But we will both

die if you stay. Go-go-go!"

The footsteps had paused st his door. The bolts were beginning to be

withdrawn. He lifted the lamp, flew across his prison, found the ring,

and took a pull at it with desperate strength. Part of what appeared

to be the solid wall drew out, disclosing an aperture through which he

could just squeeze sideways. Quick as thought he was through, forgetting

the lamp in his haste. The portion of the wall slid noiselessly back,

just as the prison door was thrown open, and the dwarfs voice was heard,

socially inviting him, like Mrs. Bond's ducks, to come and be killed.

Some people talk of darkness so palpable that it may be felt, and if

ever any one was qualified to tell from experience what it felt like,

Sir Norman was in that precise condition at that precise period.

He groped his way through the blind blackness along what seemed an

interminable distance, and stumbled, at last, over the broken stairs at

the end. With some difficult, and at the serious risk of his jugular,

he mounted them, and found himself, as Miranda had stated, in a place

he knew very well. Once here he allowed no grass to grow under him feet;

and, in five minutes after, to his great delight, he found himself where

he had never hoped to be again--in the serene moonlight and the open

air, fetterless and free.