"Oh, my God," she cried, "how can I bear it? All that I do is useless. I may lie and cheat and plot as much as I like, but all my schemes are in vain. I cannot hurt her, as she said: I cannot punish him: I have no power left. No power, no beauty, no will! Am I losing my senses, too, like Francis?" She shuddered at the thought. "Perhaps I am going mad--they have driven me mad, Caspar Brooke and his wife, between them--mad, mad, mad!--Oh, God," she said, with a long shivering sigh, "Oh, God, avert _that_ doom! Not that punishment of all others, for mercy's sake!" She looked up and down her dimly lighted room with an expression upon her face of horror and unrest, which bore some resemblance to the look of one whose intellect was becoming unhinged. It seemed as if she were afraid that something might leap out upon her from the darkness, or as if goblin voices might at any moment mutter in her ear. For a long time she stood motionless in the middle of the room, her eyes staring, her hands hanging at her sides. Then she moved slowly to a writing-table, took a sheet of paper and a pen, and wrote a few lines. When she had finished she enclosed the sheet in an envelope, and addressed it to Lady Alice Brooke. And when that was done she rang the bell and sent the letter to the post. Then she nodded and smiled strangely to herself. "Perhaps that will atone," she murmured vaguely. "And perhaps God will not take away my reason, after all." And then she began to fumble among the things upon her dressing-table for the little bottle that contained her nightly sleeping draught. * * * * * Mrs. Romaine's letter was brought to Lady Alice before she rose next morning. It contained these words:-- "I told you what was not true to-day. Your husband never asked me to go away with him--he never cared for me. I loved him, that was all. His carelessness drove me mad--I tried to revenge myself on him by making you suffer. But you would not believe me, and you were right. Pity me if you can, and pray for me. "ROSALIND ROMAINE." "Ah, poor soul!" thought Alice Brooke, her eyes filling with tears. "I do pity her--I do, with all my heart. God help her!" And she said those words again--useless as they might be--when, by and by, a messenger came hurrying to the house with the news that Mrs. Romaine had been found dead that morning--dead, from an overdose of the chloral which she kept beside her for sleeplessness. And so the life of false aims and perverted longings came to its appointed end. * * * * *