She stood at the open lattice, the cold night air blowing upon her fever-heated face; her whole being absorbed not in deliberate thought, but in a kind of waking trance. Strange pictures came out of the darkness, and spread themselves before her eyes. She saw her first lover lying on the broad flat rock at St. Nectan's Kieve, face downward, shot through the heart, the water stained with the life-blood slowly oozing from his breast. And then, when that picture faded into the blackness of night, she saw her husband and Oliver de Cazalet standing opposite to each other on the broad level sands at Trebarwith, the long waves rising up behind them like a low wall of translucent green, crested with silvery whiteness. So they would stand face to face a few hours hence. From her lurking-place behind the trees and brushwood at the entrance to the Kieve she had heard the appointment made--and she knew that at seven o'clock those two were to meet, with deadliest intent. She had so planned it--a life for a life.
She had no shadow of doubt as to which of those two would fall. Three months ago on the Riffel she had seen the Baron's skill as a marksman tested--she had seen him the wonder of the crowd at those rustic sports--seen him perform feats which only a man who has reduced pistol-shooting to a science would attempt. Against this man Leonard Tregonell--good all-round sportsman as he was--could have very little chance. Leonard had always been satisfied with that moderate skilfulness which comes easily and unconsciously. He had never given time and labour to any of the arts he pursued--content to be able to hold his own among parasites and flatterers.
"A life for a life," repeated Christabel, her lips moving dumbly, her heart throbbing heavily, as if it were beating out those awful words. "A life for a life--the old law--the law of justice--God's own sentence against murder. The law could not touch this murderer--but there was one way by which that cruel deed might be punished, and I found it."
The slow silent hours wore on. Christabel left the window, shivering with cold, though cheeks, brow, and lips were burning. She walked up and down the room for a long while, till the very atmosphere of the room, nay, of the house itself, seemed unendurable. She felt as if she were being suffocated, and this sense of oppression became so strong that she was sorely tempted to shriek aloud, to call upon some one for rescue from that stifling vault. The feeling grew to such intensity that she flung on her hat and cloak, and went quickly downstairs to a lobby-door that opened into the garden, a little door which she had unbolted many a night after the servants had locked up the house, in order to steal out in the moonlight and among the dewy flowers, and across the dewy turf to those shrubbery walks which had such a mysterious look--half in light and half in shadow.