“I would sooner see her laid in her grave than dragged before a judge and jury to be tried for the murder of the bad and cruel woman who stole her husband and blighted all the happiness of her young life!” she said to herself, “And yet I would give worlds to see her cleared from the base accusation Sibyl St. Alban made against her in her dying hours. But there is no hope of that. The mystery will never be cleared away.” When she looked at the rigid white face upon the bed and thought of the suffering that had come to this last fair descendant of the proud old Selwyns through her nephew’s sin she felt that she cordially hated Talbot Strangemore. “If his mother could look down upon Nina now what must she think of her selfish work?” she thought, for she could not divest herself of the impression that her sister-in-law had acted from purely selfish considerations in bringing about Nina’s marriage with her son. “Oh,” cried Kitty, and looking down at Nina, Miss Strangemore saw that her dark eyes had flared wide open and her lips parted with a gasp of returning consciousness. She had come back to life, to consciousness, to sorrow. The two women there who loved this beautiful young creature better than they loved anything else on earth did not know whether to laugh or weep at her recovery. But Kitty took the nerveless white hand in her own and kissed it warmly through falling tears, while the spinster scarcely less moved, but hiding her emotion better, continued to bathe Nina’s face and hands with delicate, pungent perfumes. “Oh, Aunt Drusilla, I thought I was dying just now, and I was so glad, so glad, but now I am come back to life, and I could weep with the very sorrow of it,” shivered the wretched girl, “I--I--think something frightened me very much just now, but I cannot quite remember. My brain seems dazed. Some one said something just now, something very horrible! What was it, Kitty? tell me.” “It was nothing, Miss Nina, dear, only your fancy,” soothed the maid. She could not summon courage to tell her the truth, she looked so frail and helpless, so like a broken flower, lying back among the pillows with her wan, white face and masses of disheveled golden hair that contrasted so strangely with her large, brilliant dark eyes, darker and larger than ever now as they stared perplexedly at the maid. “But I am sure there was something,” she said, faintly, “I--I--shall remember it myself presently,” and suddenly like a flash of light memory came back. She gave a long, low, shivering moan, and exclaimed: “Some one--Lucy I think--said that I had killed Mrs. St. Alban.” “No, no, dear,” her aunt answered. “Not quite that.” “Something very like it, then. Now I remember it. Mrs. St. Alban made them write down that I, Nina, who never harmed the tiniest fly, even--that I had killed her.” “We did not believe it, darling,” soothed Miss Drusilla.