She was proud and sensitive. She had chosen death rather than the public disgrace of the divorce she believed that Talbot intended to have. She could not think of anything more terrible than that. If any one had told her that a degradation even deeper awaited her, that before long she would be convicted of a murder, that the shadow of the gallows tree hung over her head, and that ere many months she would feel the horrible rope of the hangman about her fair white throat, she would never have lived to endure it, she would have fallen down dead with the very horror of the thought. But she did not dream of all that impended over her. She did not know that her husband had gone abroad, that Sibyl St. Alban was dead, and that she herself lay under the ban of murder. The Fieldings had kept everything from her in the kindness of their hearts, waiting until she grew strong enough to bear it. So in utter ignorance of all that awaited her, of the tragedy that loomed over her darkly, Nina went straight to her fate. * * * * * The next morning she was gone and Mrs. Fielding found a brief note upon the pillow the tired head had been wont to press. “Do not be alarmed about me, dear friends,” the poor sick girl had written. “I am not going to make another effort at self destruction. I am simply gone away upon an imperative matter of business, and I shall return to you in a few hours never to leave you again if you will let me stay with you. I have forever renounced home and name and husband, and I desire that no one shall ever know that Nina Strangemore still lives upon the cruel earth--no one at least except you two who have been so good to me!” CHAPTER XXVII. BACK TO SELWYN HEIGHTS. The great house on Selwyn Heights where that dreadful tragedy had so lately been enacted loomed up dark and stern and stately in the soft spring moonlight. The salty breath of the sea came up over the high bluff and mingled with the perfume of flowers in the spacious terraced grounds. In the great mansion everything was still and silent as the spell of the midnight hour fell over all. “Midnight was come, and every vital thing With sweet sound sleep their weary limbs did rest; The beasts were still, the little birds that sing, Now sweetly slept beside their mother’s breast.” Miss Drusilla Strangemore, the grim guardian of Selwyn Heights in the absence of its master, slumbered peacefully in her room, the domestics had all retired hours ago. Surely no one could detect her now, thought the fair young mistress of that stately home, as she stole along through the dark, deserted halls, and entered her own especial chamber, stealthily, like a thief in the night.