“She had been to a reception and was glittering in diamonds and frosty laces. She hung around his neck, and, weeping, told him of the wicked falsehoods I had circulated about her. He kissed her tears away, and told her I could never be his friend again, that his contempt would bitterly punish my treachery. “Those words of scorn for me, those caresses for her, drove me mad with jealous rage. Once I had begged him to kiss _me_. He refused in cold surprise, saying he did not like kisses between men, and he should never kiss any one but the one beloved woman who should be his wife. Those kisses awoke the sleeping devil in my nature! I had often wanted to kill myself, but this was the first time I ever thirsted for another’s life. “There was a dagger on my person I had bought to kill myself. When Mrs. Vale went weeping from the room I sprang through the low library window; I flung myself on Ronald Vale like a tiger, and buried my dagger in his false heart!” “Ah-h!” suddenly groaned the prisoner; and for once he quailed before the glances of hatred that fell on him, and put up his hand before his face. “Oh, Percy, my poor boy, you did not do it--tell me you did not do it!” wailed an anguished voice, and Mrs. Smith, his faithful friend and nurse, grasped his arm in a convulsive pressure. A low, gurgling sound came from her white lips, and then a torrent of blood flowed from them. In a moment she was dead--dead of the shock and horror of knowing her beloved master a murderer; but happily dead ere she knew the full extent of his wickedness, ere she heard of the baseness with which he had persecuted the hapless widow and her only child, his conspiracy against Francis Murray, and his crowning fiendish act in trying to burn two sleeping women in their house, to gratify his sleepless hatred, and in fear lest they should yet bring home to him his awful crime. The further hearing of the trial had to be postponed until the morrow. The prisoner had quite broken down, and was weeping womanish tears over the dead woman, who had been his friend from his unfortunate childhood. He was remanded to prison, and the body of Mrs. Smith, after a quiet inquest, was buried the next day. Italy returned with Mrs. Mays, the German, and Emmett Harlow to their boarding-house. She found her mother sitting quietly in the parlor. A moment later Isabel Severn abruptly entered the room. The young widow’s beautiful face looked like marble against her sable mourning-robes and jet-black locks, and her somber dark eyes fastened themselves on Italy with an expression of keen despair. She went up to the young girl, extending her slender white hands with a gesture of pleading. “Oh, for God’s sake! tell me it is not true!” she cried. “Ah, I have loved you so, loved and trusted you, believing you an angel. It breaks my heart to think that you are wicked and deceitful.”