Stories by American Authors Volume III Part 18

"She has too great a fondness for the horrible and the fantastic not to have heard the story in its smallest details," said Manning.

Mrs. Manning had taken the gla.s.s in her fine, thin hands. Evidently it and its mystic legend had a morbid fascination for her. A strange light gleamed in her wondrous eyes, and Laughton was startled again to see the extraordinary resemblance between her and the picture they had looked at on the day the goblet had been bought.

"When the poison was poured into it," she said at last, with quick and restless glances at the two men, "the gla.s.s broke--then the tale was true?"

"It was a coincidence only, I'm afraid," said her husband, who had rallied and regained strength under the unwonted excitement.

Just then the old-fas.h.i.+oned clock on the stairs struck five. Mrs.

Manning started up, holding the goblet in her hand.

"It is time for your medicine," she said.

"As you please," answered her husband wearily, sinking back on his pillow. "My wife insists on giving me every drop of my potions with her own hands. I shall not trouble her much longer, and I doubt if it is any use for her to trouble me now."

"I shall give you everything in this gla.s.s after this," she said.

"In the Venetian gla.s.s?" asked Larry.

"Yes," she said, turning on him fiercely; "why not?"

"Do you think the doctor is trying to poison me?" asked her husband.

"No, I do not think the doctor is trying to poison you," she repeated mechanically as she moved toward a little sideboard in a corner of the room. "But I shall give you all your medicines in this hereafter."

She stood at the little sideboard, with her back toward them, and she mingled the contents of various phials in the Venetian goblet. Then she turned to cross the room to her husband. As she walked with the gla.s.s in her hand there was a rift in the clouds high over the other side of the river, and the rays of the setting sun thrust themselves through the window and lighted up the glory of her hair and showed the strange gleam in her staring eyes. Another step, and the red rays fell on the Venetian gla.s.s, and it burned and glowed, and the green serpents twined about its ruby stem seemed to twist and crawl with malignant life, while their scorching eyes shot fire. Another step, and she stood by the bedside. As John Manning reached out his hand for the goblet, a tremor pa.s.sed through her, her fingers clinched the fragile stem, and the gla.s.s fell on the floor and was shattered to s.h.i.+vers as its fellow had been shattered three centuries ago and more.

She still stared steadily before her; then her lips parted, and she said, "The gla.s.s broke--the gla.s.s broke--then the tale is true!" And with one hysteric shriek she fell forward amid the fragments of the Venetian goblet, unconscious thereafter of all things.