The Lady Evelyn by Max Pemberton

The two men sat in the great bare room of the House at Setchevo and watched the ebbing firelight as it played upon the dead man's face and declared the horror of it. Not a sound came to them but that of their heavy breathing. They feared almost to raise a hand lest by any movement the living should be called to avenge the dead. Just as he had fallen, heavily and in anger, so the old Chevalier lay, his face upturned, the sightless eyes still open as though gazing now upon the eternal mysteries. And none knew better than Gavin Ord that death might be their worst enemy, loosing upon them the worst passions of their jailers and forbidding them any longer even to hope.

This he knew, and yet there came no profit of the knowledge. If he feared death, it was for Evelyn's sake. Sitting there by the firelight, waiting in tense doubt for the coming of the dead man's friends, he could recall a picture of Evelyn as first he saw her in the hall of the Manor. How stately she was; with what dignity she had received him! And what an odd mental hallucination he had suffered when he thought to hear her crying to him from the river. But was it altogether an hallucination and did this explanation satisfy? Here, to-night, it seemed that he must die because of his friendship for her. How foolish, then, the call from the unseen world had been if its meaning were so, and his own death had been the subject of the prophecy! That he could not believe. The firm idea that he had been chosen to love and befriend this beautiful girl remained his own even in this momentous hour. He must suffer this to save her -- how or by what means he did not pretend to say -- nor would he account death as other than a friend if by death salvation came to one who alone among women had taught him to say, "I love."