“My husband,” she wrote, and a great burning tear splashed on the word, and almost blotted it out; “I am going away out of your life forever! I know all now, and I take the only way I can think of to free you from the fetters that chafe you so cruelly. May God forgive me for what I am going to do to-night, for I am so maddened by my wrongs that I am not accountable. But you will be free, you will be happy, and I ask no more of fate. Do not blame me when they tell you of the awful deed I have done. Only remember that I was driven mad by my wrongs, and that my oath to your dying mother compelled me to the deed.” To that strangely ambiguous note she signed her name in full, “Nina Selwyn Strangemore,” and then she laid it conspicuously upon the toilet table, and left the room, locking the door outside, and taking the key away that her flight might not be discovered until morning. “I shall be dead then--dead in the deep sea, or perhaps the cold waves will cast me back upon the sands, and he will behold my dead face and rejoice that he is free to marry his beloved Sibyl,” she said and she went on steadily to the place where day after day she and Lion had waited for the ship that would bring Talbot home. She had a fancy that on that spot where she had stood so often she would seek her death. How dark was the night, how dark the sea! No one saw the slender black-clad figure stealing along the shore going to her death. “Mad from life’s history, Glad to death’s mystery.” Behind her on the tall heights stood her stately home, the goodly inheritance her father had left his child. She looked back just once at its gloomy towers with a farewell on her lips. “It will belong to Talbot now--Talbot and his blue-eyed love,” she murmured, and with a prayer to heaven for peace and pardon she sprang desperately into the cold, black water. CHAPTER XVII. SIBYL’S ACCUSATION. Something like a blind horror filled Talbot Strangemore’s heart as Mrs. St. Alban’s blighting accusation of his wife fell upon his ears. He staggered back from her side with a cry that was almost like the wail of a lost soul, and passed his hand before his eyes in a bewildered way, then turning to her again, he exclaimed in hoarse tones of anguish: “Sibyl, you know not what you say! You have made a terrible mistake! My wife is innocent of the guilt with which you charge her!” And Miss Drusilla, who had heard all with a horror equal to his own, echoed, fiercely: “She is innocent! Woman, how dare you charge our little Nina with such a fearful sin? The angels in Heaven are not more guiltless of that sin than she!” And Sibyl St. Alban, inwardly full of malicious triumph, lifted her heavy eyes and answered in a voice that sounded faint and far away like a dying tone: “If she is innocent why is she not here? Why, oh, why, has she--fled from the scene of her crime?”