Lady Pippinworth was in his arms when they heard a little cry,
so faint that a violin string makes as much moan when it snaps. In a
dread silence he lit a match, and as it flared the figure of a girl
was seen upon the floor. She was dead; and even as he knew that she
was dead he recognized her. "Grizel!" he cried. The other woman who
had lured him from his true love uttered a piercing scream and ran
towards the hotel. When she returned with men and lanterns there was
no one in the arbour, but there were what had been a man and a girl.
They lay side by side. The startled onlookers unbared their heads. A
solemn voice said, "In death not divided."
He was not the only occupant of the hotel reading-room as he saw all
this, and when his head fell forward and he groaned, the others looked
up from their papers. A lady asked if he was unwell.
"I have had a great shock," he replied in a daze, pulling his hand
across his forehead.
"Something you have seen in your paper?" inquired a clergyman who had
been complaining that there was no news.
"People I knew," said Tommy, not yet certain which world he was in.
"Dead?" the lady asked sympathetically.
"I knew them well," he said, and staggered into the fresh air.
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