He said that the evidence against Mrs. Strangemore did not rest wholly upon the dying deposition of the murdered lady. The murderess had dropped a letter upon the floor of Mrs. St. Alban’s room in her hurried flight--a letter written that night by Mr. Strangemore to his wife, and which he told some one afterward he had slipped under the door of her chamber. There was a piercing cry in the court-room. Nina sprang upon her feet pale as death, wild, excited. “I never received that letter, I never even heard of it. Where is it now?” she cried, in deep agitation. Mr. Davenport hastened to her side. The counsel for the prosecution was about to read Talbot Strangemore’s letter, dated on the night of the tragedy, in open court. Nina leaned forward with parted lips and eager eyes to listen. Her veil was pushed carelessly back, and people gazed in wonder at the lovely _spirituelle_ face, marveling that one so young and fair with the expression of a suffering angel, could be in reality a crime-stained sinner. But she did not heed them. In that moment when they were trying her for life or death, when there seemed to be no hope for her in earth or heaven, when the black shadow of the scaffold hung gloomily over her fair young head, there came to Nina Strangemore a moment of supreme and perfect joy--a moment of bliss all the fairer from contrast with the gloom that had encompassed her, a glimpse from out all the horror of a Hades at lost Heaven. The counsel for the prosecution was reading aloud in a cold dispassionate voice: