“That is the bitterest part of it,” said Oswald Ferris, low and bitterly. “I have lost myself for her sake, and after all she was not worth it. Oh, how I fooled myself with the thought of making that dainty creature my bride. She promised it. She took my ring, my gifts, she let me hold her in my arms, she suffered me to kiss her face, and to toy with her soft gold hair, and after all she was false. She was only feeding her vanity with my admiration, and by and by when a new victim came, she dropped me as coolly as if I had been a soulless clod, instead of a man mad for love and thirsting for vengeance. Was it any wonder I was wrought to frenzy when she lavished her love and her smiles on you, when she even dared try to divorce you from your fair, sweet bride? Oh, my God”--he paused, abruptly, with a startled look, as if in his passion he had uttered too much. “Why did you not tell me how she had wronged you then, while she was making a fool of me?--doubly a fool, for I had known her wiles before,” said Talbot, with biting self-contempt. “Did you think I wore my heart on my sleeve for daws to peck at?” demanded Ferris. “No, I was too proud. I bore all in silence, save that now and then I reproached her with bitter looks and barbed words, which she received with tacit defiance. I wondered then why she had no conscience. I often wonder now why she had no fear. Did she think she could drive a great, strong powerful animal mad with impunity?” “She knew that the animal in this case had a soul,” said Strangemore, with a rather dreary smile. “Women expect men to bear such wrongs as yours, _mon ami_, with meekness and equanimity. You would not have harmed that gilded butterfly, would you? Nay,” he added, springing to his feet while a terrible suspicion smote his brain, “_You_ did not hurt her, did you? You whose wrongs were so deep that your brain was half distraught with rage and resentment, you did not strike the dagger into her white breast, did you?” The suspicion and the words were born together, and with such suddenness that Ferris was for a moment staggered by them. He recoiled before the excited speaker with a marble-white face and a startled hunted look that was almost like guilt itself in his blazing eyes. Strangemore believed that he had detected the murderer of Sibyl St. Alban. “My God, Ferris, then it was you that committed that dastardly deed!” he cried. Ferris had recovered himself now. He turned upon his accuser with passionate defiance.