Miss Drusilla, beginning to recover from the trance of horror which had struck her at first, began to bustle around. She cleared the room first of all the gaping, terrified domestics who were huddled in a group at the foot of the bed, whispering fearfully together. One man in his retreat picked up the blood-stained dagger and presented it to Miss Drusilla. The housemaid found a letter lying on the floor. She could not read, so she handed it to Helen Starr who stood nearest her. “Oh, Miss, here’s a letter I found on the floor. Mayhap the bloody murderer who killed that lady dropped it there,” she shuddered. Helen took it with an answering shiver of fear. She held it out and read the name upon the back, then she held it out to her host. “Perhaps I had better give it to you, as it is addressed to your wife,” she said. Talbot Strangemore took it from her hand and looked at it. It was the letter he had slipped under Nina’s door a few hours ago. “Yes, it belongs to my wife. I wrote it, but how came it here?” he said, full of wonder. “Perhaps she has been in here and dropped it,” said some one, and those words although so innocently spoken, suggested a terrible possibility to every one. Every face blanched suddenly, and a silence fell that was more fearful than words. And in their sudden interest over the letter no one noticed that Sibyl’s eyes had opened languidly again, and that she heard and saw all that was passing around her. Her first thought was one of terror that she had thrown Talbot’s letter carelessly from her in her wrath and that now it was discovered in her possession. But a moment later some one spoke the thoughtless words, “Perhaps she has been in here and dropped it,” and the sentence conveyed such a sinister idea to her mind that she drew a quick breath and shut her eyes again before Talbot looked around at her and said, decidedly: “No, I do not believe that Nina has been in this room at all. When Mrs. St. Alban revives from her swoon she will no doubt be able to explain how it came to be in here.” He crushed it fiercely in his hand, and gazed anxiously at the still white face on the pillow, until the pale gold lashes fluttered open and Sibyl looked up at him with a faint, dying expression. “You are better, Sibyl. Can you speak to us?” he asked. “No, I am not better--I--I--am dying,” faintly articulated the victim. “Let some one--bring--pencil and--and paper. Let them take--my--my dying deposition!” It was Duke Cameron who obeyed her. He looked with sad, pained eyes at the dying face. “Poor Sibyl,” he said, sorrowfully, as to a hurt child, “I am ready now--what is it you wish me to write?” She looked at Talbot Strangemore not at him as she answered, slowly and painfully: