A distant scream came from somewhere in the house, but the two women did not hear it. A maid came scurrying downstairs, white and excited. She dashed unceremoniously into the room, panting out the single exclamation: "Hurry!" Celeste slowly turned toward her. "What is it, Mary?" she asked, mechanically, almost unconsciously. "Mr. Sherrod, ma'am--you must come quick. In the studio," gasped the maid. "Is Jud here?" asked Justine, raising herself in the chair. A new light struggled into her eyes. Celeste, cold with the certainty of some terrible news, straightened to receive the blow. "Is it--bad, Mary?" she asked. "Oh, ma'am, I--I can't tell you," almost whispered the girl. "It's awful! I'll see him to my dying day." "He--he is dead?" The question came from frozen lips. The maid burst into tears. CHAPTER XXVIII. HEARTS. Sherrod's body lay stretched across the rug in front of the grate in his studio. His coat and vest had been hastily thrown aside and his white shirt, covering the deep chest, was saturated with blood. The carved hilt of a Malay dagger stood defiantly above the cleft heart. The steel was deep in his body. He had dealt one blow, but he had sent the blade of the kris straight home; so true was its course that death must have been instantaneous. He lay flat on his broad back, his neck twisted as if checked in the supreme moment of agony; death had left its stamp of pain on his ghastly face. On the floor near the body a piece of white paper was found, across which was scrawled: "Forgive me." The hand that penciled these words was the same that drove home the blade, but it had trembled only in the writing, not in the blow. The hasty scrawl revealed his eagerness to have over with life while there was yet a chance to escape facing the ruined women below. The last plea of the suicide was not directed to either of the loved ones; it was left for each to take it to her heart and in secrecy hold it as hers alone--cherishing it, if she could. His had been a crime that the law could not sufficiently punish. He had indicted the penalty himself and he had asked forgiveness of those he had wronged in his weakness. They had loved him to the hour of his death; they had trusted him. Neither had known him in his baseness or his cowardice--they knew him only as loving, devoted and true. Death came just as the joys of being his were shattered; the pains he had given them in life were known only after he had gone from them. They were asked to forgive a dead man who had been everything to them in life, and whom they had loved until his last breath was drawn; he did not wait to receive their reproaches; he had gone away as they had known him and they had not looked upon the face of guilt. * * * * *