Here, after she had been imprisoned for a week, Norman de Vere found his beloved and revered mother ill unto death with fever and raving in delirium. Too low to be removed, he had to fit the cabin up as comfortably as possible for transient occupancy. Here he remained with some trusty servants in the squalid negro cabin, nursing his mother, while up at Verelands, his beautiful home, the fiendish Camille held complete sway, and the city rang with the story of the wicked revenge she had taken on her husband for his obstinacy in refusing to forgive her for a harmless flirtation. There were many who condemned her, but a few people sympathized with her, saying that Norman had been too hard upon her and deserved his punishment. A few people even called out of curiosity, but Finette sent them curtly away with the excuse that her mistress was ill and could see no one. This was not a falsehood, for Camille really lay upon Sweetheart’s pretty bed from day to day, raging, raving in alternate hatred and despair, realizing, after her long plotting for vengeance, that her triumph had left her ruined life waste and empty as before of the one blessing she had craved so madly--the love of the man whom she had turned against her by her terrible crime. Finette was changing daily, too. Her once cringing manner had turned to insolence, and she affected to tremble every time the door-bell rang, vowing that she listened daily for the officers to come and arrest her mistress for the murder with which Norman de Vere had charged her. In vain Camille protested her innocence, for her scared eyes betrayed her guilt. She had seen the murdered Robert Lacy so often in her dreams that she began to fancy he haunted her, and could not bear for the maid to leave her alone for a minute in the beautiful room where she had once been so wildly happy, but which now seemed peopled with fiends from Hades, grinning at her from over one another’s shoulders. Lying there, watched by the sullen, insolent creature who had aided and abetted her in all of her cruel, wicked schemes for the sake of the golden bribe she offered, what visions came to Camille, the proud beauty whose unbridled passions had made shipwreck of her life! Visions of the past and of the glorious opportunities for happiness she had wasted and flung into the yawning pit of sin. Beautiful, rich, madly beloved--she had been all these, yet now she lay shivering, terrified, friendless, waiting, fearing, dreading the--prison cell. Yes, she could think of nothing else but Norman’s mad threat that now he would betray the dark secret kept so long, and so free himself from the incubus she had made of herself, and punish her for the sorrow she had brought upon those dearer to him than his own life.