All these things he had said over to himself many times since Nina’s flitting that awful night, and with the sanguine spirit of a young man, he had hoped for Nina’s return to him, had hoped that all might yet be well, and that he might make her so happy that she would forget the sad and unhappy past. But that terrible paragraph he had just read in the paper struck down at one fell blow the rose-colored fabric of his hopes and dreams. She was dead, the beautiful, dark-eyed maiden who had been his wife in name only for five long years that he had spent in restless wanderings in foreign lands, chafing like a fool and a madman against the bondage that held him. In the dark and terrible hour that came to him now he cursed himself bitterly for his folly and his sin that had cost him so dear. He had been in sight of an earthly heaven, and had lost it by his willful blindness. While he raved alone in his madness some one came to tell him that Sibyl St. Alban had that moment died. CHAPTER XXIII. COMPAGNONS DU VOYAGE. And so Talbot Strangemore’s home-coming, long-deferred, had ended in a tragedy. The two women who had loved him were both dead. Both had died wretched and tragical deaths, and he felt dimly in his soul that he was to blame for it all. Only a few days ago he had deemed himself wretched because he was bound to one woman while loving another one. What a mockery those foolish pangs seemed to him now in the light of the real grief and deep remorse that came to him when he realized that Sibyl St. Alban and Nina, his wife, had both gone out of the world in their youth and beauty for his sake. He had a conscience although it had spoken but seldom in the years while he had been away, neglecting his simple child-bride, and hating the bonds that held them together. It wakened to active life now and almost maddened him with its stinging reproaches and accusations. It appeared to him now as if his Aunt Drusilla, Kitty, his dead wife’s maid, and the servants generally, at Selwyn Heights, hated the very sight of him. The story of Nina’s wrongs and sorrows had become known to all, and every one seemed to resent his part in it. Cold looks and averted faces met him everywhere. No one felt any kindness or pity for the fickle husband whose folly had driven the fair young mistress of Selwyn Heights to her dreadful death. “I cannot bear my life here. I shall go mad with shame and sorrow and remorse, if I go on like this,” he said to Miss Strangemore soon. “Can you bear it to stay here and let me go abroad again?”