Percy Seabright received sentence of confinement for life with the unvarying smile he had worn through the whole trial. He made one single request. It was that he might be permitted to pay a farewell visit to the grave of Ronald Vale, whom he had murdered in revenge for his slighted love. The wish was granted. By that quiet grave his bright smile faded, his dazzling dark eyes grew dim, and he wept bitterly for the friend whom he had loved with that strange, morbid passion. It was the only touch of feeling he had betrayed. CHAPTER XXXII. IN THE SUNSET’S GLOW. The morning after the end of the famous trial Mrs. Murray came with her son to call on the Vales. Francis Murray’s luxuriant beard had been all shaved off and his fair clustering locks carefully trimmed to his well-shaped head. The blue glasses had been laid aside with the German professor’s slouching gait and careless clothes. He was dressed in the extreme of fashion, and appeared handsomer than ever to Italy’s admiring eyes. But she greeted him with a very quiet, constrained air. She was afraid, horribly afraid, that Mrs. Murray had confided to her son the story of that night when she had owned her love for him. Mrs. Murray had come to carry off the Vales to The Lodge. They must be her guests this winter, she declared! Her heart yearned over the pale, sad, golden-haired woman who had borne such a heavy cross of sorrow. She longed to make amends to her for all the grievous past. “Come back to us, my dear, in your own old home, and let us love you as we want to and try to make you happy,” she said lovingly, as she put her arms about the graceful drooping form. If there was one wish in the world that Mrs. Vale cherished it was to return to the old home where she had been so happy with her lost Ronald. Tears of joy sparkled in her dark-blue eyes, as she answered: “We will be glad to come to you until we make arrangements for another home.” Whatever Italy felt, she could not gainsay the wishes of that beloved mother, so she became Mrs. Murray’s guest at The Lodge, exposed to all the dangerous fascinations of its magnificent master. And certainly he did not spare any effort to wound that girlish heart with the shaft of Cupid. He could be dangerously fascinating when he chose to exert himself, and he chose to do it now. Without the least obtrusiveness he surrounded her life with the most delicate attentions. But there are none so blind as those who will not see. Italy saw in her host’s tenderness only the rites of a courteous hospitality. A little thorn of jealousy was rankling deep in her heart. She knew that he had been to call on Alys Audenreid, for he had spoken of it frankly one day, but she did not know that Alys was in the habit of writing him tender little notes begging for these visits. The girl was playing her last desperate card to win him. But when he spoke of her one day before his mother, she said curtly: