It was she, Sybil, the accused, whose very aspect accused her more loudly than the dying woman had done; for she stood there, still in her fiery masquerade dress, her face pallid, her eyes blazing, her wild black hair loose and streaming, her crimsoned hand raised and grasping a bloodstained dagger. "Oh, wretched woman! most wretched woman! What is this that you have done?" groaned Lyon Berners, in unutterable agony--agony not for the dead beauty before him, but for the living wife, whom he felt that he had driven to this deed of desperation. "Oh, Sybil! Sybil! what have you done?" he cried, grinding his hands together. "I? I have done nothing!" faltered his wife, with pale and tremulous lips. "Oh, Sybil! Sybil! would to Heaven you had died before this night! Or that I could now give my life for this life that you have madly taken!" moaned Lyon. "I have taken no life! What do you mean? This is horrible!" exclaimed Sybil, dropping the dagger, and looking around upon her husband and friends, who all shrank from her. "I have taken no life! I am no assassin! Who dares to accuse me?" she demanded, standing up pale and haughty among them. And then she saw that every lowered eye, every compressed lip, every shuddering and shrinking form, silently accused her. Mr. Berners had turned again to the dead woman. His hand was eagerly searching for some pulsation at the heart. Soon he ceased his efforts, and arose. "Vain! vain!" he said, "all is still and lifeless, and growing cold and stiff in death. Oh! my wretched wife!" "The lady may not be dead! This may be a swoon from loss of blood. In such a swoon she would be pulseless and breathless, or seem so! let me try! I have seen many a swoon from loss of blood, as well as many a death from the same cause, in my military experience," said Captain Pendleton, pushing forward and kneeling by the sofa, and beginning his tests, guided by experience. His words and actions unbound the spell of horror that had till then held the assembled company still and mute, and now all pressed forward towards the sofa, and bent over the little group there. "Air! air! friends, if you please! Stand farther off. And some one open a window!" exclaimed Captain Pendleton, peremptorily. And he was immediately obeyed by the falling off of the crowd, one of whom threw open a window. "Some one should fetch a physician!" suggested Beatrix Pendleton, whose palsied tongue was now at length unloosed. And half a dozen gentlemen immediately started for the stables to dispatch a messenger for the village doctor from Blackville. "And while they are fetching the physician, they should summon the coroner also," suggested a voice from the crowd. "No! no! not until we have ascertained that life is actually extinct," exclaimed Captain Pendleton, hastily; at the same time seeking and meeting the eyes of Mr. Berners, with a meaning gaze said: