While we gaze, forth from the recesses of the gynaeceum there breaks a cry, expressing rather wrath and surprise than mere pain.  Then there comes another, more plaintive—­the moan of a strong man in the death-throe.

We know that voice very well; we have heard it many times, calm and regal, above the wrangle of councils and the roar of battle; often it prayed for victory or for the people’s weal, but it never yet called on earth or heaven to help Agamemnon.  The Chorus hear it too; but they linger and palter, while each gives his grave sentence deliberately in his proper turn.  One or two advise action and interference, and stand perfectly still.  At last we hear a heavy, choking groan, and a great stillness follows.  We know that all is over—­we know that there is a stir already down there in Hades—­we seem to catch a far-off murmur raised by a thousand weak, tremulous voices—­the very ghost of a wail—­as the shadows of those who died gallantly in their harness before Troy gather to meet their old leader, the mightiest Atride.

In the background of all we fancy a hideous Eidolon, from whose side even the damned recoil in loathing.  There is a grin on the lips yet red and wet with the traces of the unholy banquet.  Thyestes exalts over the fulfillment of another chapter in the inevitable curse.

Who has not grown savage over that scene?  We hate the old drivelers less when, a few minutes later, they truckle and temporize with the awful shape, who comes forth with a splash of blood on her slender wrist, and a speck or two on her white, lofty forehead.

Just so helpless and useless I felt at that moment.  I was standing by while a foul wrong was being wrought.  I saw nothing but ruin for Guy, and desolate misery for Constance, in the black future.  Yet I could think of no argument or counsel that would in the least avail.  I felt sick at heart.  It was some minutes before I answered his last question.  At last the words broke from me almost unconsciously:  “Ah! how will you answer to God and man for last night’s work?”

I forgot that I was quoting the cry of the Covenanter’s widow when she knelt by her husband’s corpse, and looked up into Claverhouse’s face with those sad eyes that were ever dim and cloudy after the carbines flashed across them.  But Guy remembered it, and answered instantly in the words of his favorite hero,

“I can answer it to man well enough, and I will take God in my own hand.”

Years afterward we both recalled that fatal defiance, when the speaker lay helpless, at the mercy of the Omnipotence whose might he challenged.  Just then his servant, who was busily preparing for departure, entered the room.