“I am innocent, Frank,” she said, “but oh, kill me, too; for you can never believe me. I was seeking you when he came to me; I had upbraided myself, and determined to ask your forgiveness for my neglect of you. But oh! for nothing more, as Heaven is my judge! But kill me; you can never again think me a true and honest wife.” For a moment the somnambulist stood and gazed at her, but surely saw her not. “He is mad!” she said, “mad! Or have I lost my senses? Frank, Frank, I will save you! Begone! I am to blame! I will accept the responsibility! Begone!” She did not move as she spoke, nor did he. They both looked steadily at each other. She thought he was about to answer her, when he moved away, retracing his steps from the room as stealthily as he had entered it. She watched him with a strange fascination, and without the power to move until he disappeared; and then, with a moaning cry, she sank upon her knees and put out her hand toward the ghastly heap upon the floor, in the hope that she was only dreaming, and that all she had seen was mere fantasy; but the carpet was wet, and there was blood upon her hand. “Why did I not kill him!” he had exclaimed, as we know, when he had returned to his own room and passed out of his sleep to life and consciousness. He knew nothing of the murderous scene in which he had played so terrible a part--knew nothing of the crumpled, bleeding body lying in a hideous heap, with its pale companion looking down upon it, and the light piercing in through the curtained window with ghostlike fingers. Fenella watched the first sentinels of the morning, pointing airy fingers here and there; one trembling sun-glance falling upon the silver hilt of the red dagger; another seeking, as it were, to find out the hideous face of the dead man. But she uttered no word, only stood there still and quiet, like some strangely sculptured statue waiting to be called to life--as she was presently called by an inspector of police and the manager of the hotel after she had given the alarm. Aroused to action, she took upon herself all the odium of her husband’s deed--took it upon herself with the queen-like dignity of an avenging angel. “This man attempted my life, and I killed him!” And they knew, those common men, that when she said her life she meant her honor. To her that was her life, and they were conscious of her great beauty, even as she stood before them, pale as a ghost, and with hot, burning eyes. The officer noticed that there was no evidence of a struggle; not a curtain was awry, no chair was out of its place, the carpet was unruffled, the room was neat and trim as if nothing unusual had taken place. Before touching the body, he wrote these facts down in his book. Then, laying his hand upon the bundle of clothes, he exposed the dead face of the count, and requested the hotel manager to admit his two attendant constables. One he dispatched for a doctor; to the other he confided the custody of Lady Francis Onslow.