The Master Criminal

Excerpt: The night was of velvety blackness?one of those soft, warm, dark nights of June when the southwest wind rolls a cloud-curtain over the stars, when the air is heavy with unshed rain, when lamps burn dully, and when a nameless oppression broods over the face of the land. Seated at an open casement looking out into the London night was a woman. Her hands grasped each other over her knee with a tense grip which gave the lie to the calm of her face. Hers was a face to which in repose Rossetti would have woven an adoring sonnet, though not as to another lazy, laughing, languid Jenny, fond of a kiss, and fond of a guinea, but a sonnet of purity and peace. Yet if the sonnet had been written, and the woman had read, the full scarlet lips which seemed to have gathered into them all the colour from her face, would have parted in scornful laughter. Her eyes, a part of the night into which they gazed, had dull shadows beneath them, painted there by weariness, yet she still sat motionless in a strained attitude of expectation. Her sole companion, seated a few yards away in an easy chair, looked up at her occasionally from a book which he held in his hand and smiled.