The Bond of Black Part 44

At first the revulsion of feeling within me caused me, I confess, to hesitate whether to take as wife a woman who had actually been a votary of Satan, but on calmer reflection, as I drove back to Charing Cross Mansions with my loved one at my side, I saw plainly how she had been victimised and held powerless beneath the terrible thraldom of this murderer Vidit and his accomplice Hibbert, who had without doubt both carried on these practices with a view to gain the subscriptions of those who joined the cult. That she was pure, honest, and upright I had never doubted, and moved to sympathy when I remembered how bitterly she had suffered, I yielded to her entreaty to be forgiven, feeling convinced of her a.s.sertion that her suspicion that I was guilty of the murder of my friend was the cause of her casting me aside and acting as she did.

Just a year has now gone by, and it has been full of changes, for my father dying suddenly, Tixover Hall has come to me, and with Muriel as my wife we live in the old place in perfect contentment and happiness.

Jack Yelverton, too, has modified his views regarding the marriage of the clergy, for Aline is now his wife, and in the good work among the poor of the dismal, overcrowded parish of St Peter's, which he pursues with such untiring energy, she, once the priestess of Satan, is now his greatest helpmate. She is trying to make atonement for the flagrant sins she committed before G.o.d, and certainly if the ministration of His Word and righteousness of heart will atone for the profanity to which she once was forced because of her love for the man who is now her husband, then a great and blessed forgiveness will be hers.

The means by which poor Roddy's life was taken have remained an entire mystery until the other day, when Muriel explained how the man Vidit, being an expert toxicologist, once made certain experiments in that old house on Herne Hill, and from these it seemed clear that the poison-- apparently one of those extremely deadly ones known to the mediaeval alchemists, a single drop of which is fatal--was flung suddenly into the eye of his victim while he spoke with him, causing instant blindness, general paralysis, and a swift, agonising death. It was the consequent discoloration of the eyes which had so puzzled the doctors.

We, however, in our blissful new-found joy seldom refer to those dark days when the shadow of evil was upon us. Happily they have pa.s.sed, and are over, for Muriel has broken for ever that most terrible tie which held her aloof from G.o.d and man--the Bond of Black.

The End.