It was one of the most terrible moments in their three lives--that moment in which they looked in horror on the proofs of Lelia’s crime. Her self-accusations they had looked on leniently, believing them nightmare dreams, as her mother said, the product of an overwrought mind and alert sympathies. While they had listened in pain and alarm, no suspicion had crossed their minds that she was guilty--she, the beautiful, gently nurtured girl, their pet and pride all her life. They had shut their eyes to her hideous deformities of temper, her pride and self-will, her scorn of Gipsy Darke, and her low estate. Her mother, indeed, had fostered every evil trait, never dreaming to what a terrible strait uncontrolled passion would yet bring her idolized daughter. They had listened in horror and grief to her ravings; they had feared she was going mad, but in neither mind dawned any suspicion of her blood guiltiness. It was left to the moment when she dragged the bundle from its hiding-place for an awful thought to be born in Laurie Willoughby’s mind. That thought made him take the bundle from the frantic mother, firmly resolved to know its fatal contents. When the dainty white gown, all crumpled and blood-stained, was unrolled before his eyes, and the ring and letters fell at his feet, a strong shudder, as of one dying, shook his whole stalwart frame. “The proofs of her guilt!” he cried, in an awful voice. For a conviction of the truth came home to him. He had not a single doubt but that everything had happened as Lelia had told it in her strange, somnambulistic state. She had murdered Gipsy, as she believed, and latent remorse had wrought upon her nerves, goading her into unconscious self-betrayal. With blended pity and horror, he looked upon the beautiful, wild-eyed creature, groping in the air for what she had lost, muttering that Laurie must never find it--no, no, no, or he would be so angry he would never love her again. With a shudder he released Mrs. Ritchie, who sank heavily into a chair, her whole frame shaking with tearless sobs of terrible despair. He picked up the beautiful ring that was all crusted and dark with blood, as Lelia had said. Oh, what a terrible price had poor Gipsy paid for her few hours of happiness in its possession! “These two letters,” he said, “I wrote to my aunt and to Gipsy Darke, and Lelia must have intercepted them. They were written on a private matter, that can interest no one now.” He placed them in his breast-pocket, and drew out a shining gold button. “I searched poor Gipsy’s room for a clue to her murderer, and I found this button on the floor in a wisp of dark hair,” he said. Then touching the sleeves of the white gown, “I see one button missing here, and this is the mate to it. Every link in the evidence is made clear now. We cannot doubt Lelia’s self-confessed sin.”