Suddenly, as if to make assurance
doubly sure, she plucked the sharp Italian stiletto from her bosom,
and with a firm, heavy hand plunged it twice into the body of the
lifeless girl. "If there be life there," she said, "it too shall
die! La Corriveau leaves no work of hers half done!"
A faint trickle of blood in red threads ran down the snow-white
vestment, and that was all! The heart had forever ceased to beat,
and the blood to circulate. The golden bowl was broken and the
silver cord of life loosed forever, and yet this last indignity
would have recalled the soul of Caroline, could she have been
conscious of it. But all was well with her now; not in the sense of
the last joyous syllables she spoke in life, but in a higher, holier
sense, as when God interprets our words, and not men, all was well
with her now.
The gaunt, iron-visaged woman knelt down upon her knees, gazing with
unshrinking eyes upon the face of her victim, as if curiously
marking the effect of a successful experiment of the aqua tofana.
It was the first time she had ever dared to administer that subtle
poison in the fashion of La Borgia.
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