“How dare you, oh, how dare you accuse me of the heinous crime committed by your own wife?” he exclaimed, hoarsely, “Have you forgotten that she, too, was maddened by her wrongs?--wrongs that you had inflicted upon her in your mad worship of her rival! Have you forgotten that Sibyl St. Alban’s dying deposition laid her death at the door of Nina Strangemore? Have you forgotten the letter dropped by your wife in the room of the murdered woman? Have you forgotten her flight that was a tacit admission of her guilt?” He hurled the angry words one after another thick and fast at his accuser and each charge fell upon Strangemore’s heart like a hail-stone. He recoiled with an exceeding bitter cry: “Oh, God, to think that my folly and madness brought all this upon my poor young wife! Would to God, I had died before my return home!” Ferris regarded him cynically, with a dark and lowering expression between his brows. “If your wife had only killed herself instead of sending her rival out of the world, too, how pleasant it would have been for you,” he observed. “You could have married Sibyl and been happy after all.” He shrunk from the lightning flash in the eyes of his companion. “Hush,” Strangemore said, hoarsely. “Do not throw my folly and sin into my face. I cannot bear it. No, I could never have married Sibyl even if Nina’s desperate suicide had left me free to do so. I loved my young wife from the first moment we met after my return. At the first sight of her pure young face the wicked infatuation that Sibyl had fostered died within me, and a pure and holy love for my neglected bride took its place. If Sibyl had not formed that mad scheme for coming to Selwyn Heights and ruining my wedded happiness all would have gone well with me. I should not have been caught in the trap she set for me, Nina would not have been driven desperate, nothing would have happened as it did!” And then he added, hoarsely: “But, so help me God, Ferris, in spite of all the awful evidence against her, I cannot believe that Nina, my wife, was guilty of that terrible crime. Some dreadful mystery hangs around that murder--a mystery that Sibyl St. Alban hid behind her false declaration that Nina had killed her. It was some other hand that drove that dagger home in her breast.” And looking steadily at the downcast face of Ferris, he said within himself: “Thou art the man!” But he did not again charge him with the crime. Some instinct told him to be wary. He said to himself that he would watch Ferris closely, but in silence, for some token that should convict him of his sin. CHAPTER XXXIII. TALBOT’S DREAMS. Talbot brooded more than ever over the memory of his dead bride after those words with Oswald Ferris. That night he dreamed of her.