“She is dead, my fair young wife whom I neglected so long, and wronged so cruelly, and it was I that drove her to her death! I am her murderer. It was my folly and sin that broke her heart and sent her away from me in despair. I am morally guilty of her death, and I wish that the heavens would fall upon me and crush me out of my loathed existence!” he groaned, in a paroxysm of despair. He was full of the bitterest self-shame and self-reproach. He knew that he had betrayed his mother’s trust. She had given him Nina so gladly, so confidingly, and he had forgotten the child who was his wife--forgotten and neglected her, and given the heart that belonged to her to another woman. And how fair, how lovely, how lovable she had been, this neglected bride of his? Keen arrows of remorse and self-reproach quivered through his heart as he realized all that he had done, all that he had brought about by his inexcusable folly and madness. Under the same roof with himself, wounded, dying, perhaps, lay the woman who had so fatally beguiled him with her blue eyes and honeyed smiles. His mad and foolish infatuation for her was over. It had burned itself to ashes as by a flash of lightning in the instant when he had looked into his wife’s dark eyes and felt, with a throb of passionate joy, that that beautiful creature belonged to him by the nearest, dearest tie upon earth, his “Other dearer life in life.” Sibyl St. Alban lay at the point of death. He was sincerely sorry for her, but he could not believe that harm had reached her at the hands of Nina. He thought of the beautiful, dimpled white hands with their slender, taper fingers and rosy palms, and he could not believe that Sibyl’s blood was upon them. They were not strong enough nor cruel enough to have driven that dagger home in the white breast of her rival. “I cannot, I will not think that she is guilty,” he had said, over and over to himself. “I must believe that she is innocent in spite of all the damning evidence in support of Sibyl’s accusation. Yes, although Nina declared to her face that she hated her, that she would never forgive her for what she had done, and prayed God to punish her for her sin, I will believe that her young soul is pure and unstained. I will try to find out how my letter to Nina came to be in Mrs. St. Alban’s room. I am sure my wife did not drop it there. Perhaps she sent it back to me in her righteous scorn and it fell into Sibyl’s hands, who knows? I could sooner believe that than the other! I have wronged my fair young wife enough already, and I will be loyal to her now. I will not even take her own terrible letter with its dreadful admissions as evidence against her. I could sooner think that in her frenzy of despair and humiliation she knew not what she was writing. Oh, my darling, if I only knew where to find you, how glad I would be, for something tells me that you will yet belong to me really and truly, and that we will yet be very happy together.”