“He loved me--my husband loved me,” she said to her beating heart, whose pulses rose to flood-tide with this joyous revelation. “Oh, what a cruel fate it was that kept that letter away from me that night! How did I miss finding it? How came it to be lying on the floor in Sibyl St. Alban’s room?” And suddenly like a flash of light the reason came to her mind. Before any one could stay her, she rose in her seat, she flashed her blazing dark eyes upon judge and jury, she shook her white hand at the counsel who was going on with his accumulated evidence against her, ruthlessly trying to rob her of her young life. “Hush,” she said. “Listen to me, for I must speak,” and in sheer wonder he obeyed her. “I never received that letter,” she went on. “If I had done so the whole current of my life would have been changed. If I had received that letter, if I had known that my husband loved me, I should not have gone away. I should have granted the interview he asked, I should have forgiven him and loved him, and I should have forgiven Sibyl St. Alban, too, for I could not have held resentment for any one in my great happiness.” A subdued murmur of pity and sympathy ran through the throng like an electric current. There were some there who pitied the girl and did not believe her guilty. These had tears in their eyes and their hearts ached for the hapless, beautiful creature who went on thrillingly: “I am quite sure I can tell you why I never received that letter. You say that my husband pushed it under my door that night. Well, Sibyl St. Alban came to my room that night to goad me to despair by her cruel words. She told me that my husband wanted a divorce from me that he might marry her. I could not bear the thought of such a disgrace touching one of the proud Selwyns, I said to myself that I would fling myself from the bluff into the sea, and so free him from his fetters. I told her to be easy, she should soon have Talbot, and then I sent her away. Oh, God, I remember now that when she reached the door she stooped down for a single moment, and I believed that she had merely stumbled. But now it all comes over me, the cruel, cruel truth! While she talked to me the letter had been slipped beneath the door, and in her anger and malice she carried it away to her own room and left it there to wreak its mission of vengeance upon me.” She turned her wild, bright eyes upon the solemn faces of the jurymen. “Have pity upon me,” she cried to them faintly. “Do not let them swear away my life upon the evidence of that letter which my husband meant to be as the dove with the olive branch. I swear to you that I never saw that letter till this moment, and that Sibyl St. Alban herself carried it to her room that fatal night leaving me in blind ignorance that she was robbing me of a treasure more precious than gold!” And then she turned back to the lawyer and held out her hand.