“What is it that I am so afraid of?” she asked herself, aloud, “I never felt so strangely before. I have a horrible dread upon me. Perhaps I am going to be ill. I think I will go to Helen Starr’s room and ask her to let me stay with her to-night. This large room with its dark corners makes me feel frightened and lonely.” She caught up a light shawl, threw it about her shoulders, and softly opening the door peered out into the hall. She drew back with a smothered exclamation. She had caught sight of a slender, dark-cloaked figure moving with swift and noiseless footsteps along the dimly lighted hall toward the stairway. Forgetting all her nervousness and terror of a little while ago, Sibyl peered through a crevice of the slightly open door at the vanishing form. “It is Nina,” she muttered, with a cruel, exultant laugh. “She is going away, and I think I may safely predict that this is the last we shall ever see of the heiress of Selwyn Heights.” In her glad excitement over Nina’s flitting she forgot her momentary fears, and her intention of going to Helen Starr’s room to pass the night. She hastily disrobed, and lay down to rest on her soft bed, under the flowing canopy of silk and lace. “I can rest in peace now that I know that I am rid of my dangerous rival,” she said, with a low laugh of triumph, as she nestled her flaxen head among the lace-trimmed pillows. “Perhaps even now she has plunged into the cold, dark sea out yonder, and Talbot may be already a widower.” Too heartless to give even one regret to the fate of the hapless girl she had wronged so cruelly, she closed her eyes and was soon fast asleep, dreaming of the day when she should be Talbot Strangemore’s bride, and mistress of Selwyn Heights. The night hours wore on to midnight. The light of the shaded lamp fell on Sibyl’s fair, placid face, its round cheeks daintily flushed by warmth, its red lips slightly parted with the soft, even breath of her happy slumber. From one of those shadowy corners that had so affrighted her with their gloom and darkness, a stealthy form crept forth to gaze upon the sleeping beauty. Oh, how the dark, blazing eyes of this sinister intruder gloated upon her loveliness! How the strong, passionate features worked with emotion beneath the shade of the dark hat drawn down over his brows! How his muscular hand trembled as it closed nervously over the hilt of a slender dagger, half hidden in his breast. “So she was afraid, was she?” came in a low, fierce sneer from his lips. “The spirit of murder made itself felt in the room, I think, and yet she wondered what it was she feared. Why did she not remember me and my wrongs that I had sworn to avenge? Ah, how lovely she is, the base little coquette! Too lovely to live, because a devil’s heart with a face like that has too much power for evil in this world! Die, my beautiful false lover, my blue-eyed siren, and go home to Hades, where you justly belong!”