All Baltimore rang with that sensation. Many recalled the beautiful fairy, coquettish Mrs. St. Alban, the bride of the rich manufacturer Ralph St. Alban. He was twice as old as she was, having been her father’s friend at college, and no one supposed that the poor professor’s daughter was in love with her elderly spouse, or that she grieved much when he suddenly died after three years of wedded bliss and left her a wealthy and attractive young widow. She had been a flirt of the most pronounced order, dreaded alike by plain wives and pretty young girls, and now when this story of the tragedy appeared, many said that they were not surprised at the fate that had befallen her. She had always had too strong a _penchant_ for the sweethearts and husbands of other women, and now Nemesis had overtaken her at last. There was a great deal of silent but intense sympathy with the young wife who had been goaded to desperation and crime by her cruel wrongs. More than one woman who had been insolently rivaled by triumphant Sibyl thought furtively within herself that the little coquette had only got what she deserved. While Rumor repeats with its thousand barbed tongues the story of the tragedy at Selwyn Heights, let us follow the flight of hapless Nina, reader mine, when she stole forth that night, wretched and despairing, from the shelter of her beautiful home. Nina had fled from Selwyn Heights with the idea of self-destruction uppermost in her mind. She had brooded morbidly over her promise to Mrs. Selwyn, until it assumed the proportions of a solemn oath in her eyes. She believed that she was solemnly bound to ignore and sacrifice herself, if in no other way the happiness of Talbot Strangemore could be secured. “I would sooner die by my own act than be divorced from him that he may marry another woman. I could not live under such shame and ignominy as that!” she cried, passionately, for she had come of a proud race, and she inherited all of their pride and nobility. And then she clasped her beautiful hands together and added, with bitter pathos: “The sorrow would be as great as the shame, for, oh, I love him still, in spite of all that has passed; I love him still, and I believe that I shall always love him! I have worshipped him so truly for five long years, have studied, read, practiced, all to improve myself for his sake, that it would be impossible now to live and look on him as the husband of another woman. It would be easier to die!” And so she had gone away, leaving behind her a pathetic little note, whose incoherent sentences only made another terrible link against her in the evidence that convicted her of a fearful sin.