She saw that the silken curtains were looped aside, and that some one had opened the outside shutters of the window. In the sash there was one pane, shattered into fragments. Above it Italy saw gleaming a wild, white, anguished face, a woman’s face--one that she knew, one that she had seen only that forenoon, bright, insolent, smiling. One moment that face gleamed ghostlike in the gloom outside the window, and it seemed to her, too, that there were white hands flung upward--white, jeweled hands, writhing in fierce despair--then the eerie vision faded from her sight, and Italy was alone--alone with the dead man whose treachery had brought her to this awful pass, and whose punishment had been meted out to him so swiftly. She stood silent one moment, like one in a trance. She heard, as in a painful dream, steps and voices in the hall outside the door--the key grated in the lock. Somebody was coming. Perhaps it would be said that she killed this monster--Craig Severn. Her tortured senses reeled and failed. She fell in a crouching, senseless heap behind the door, and her dark robes trailed in the pool of warm blood. CHAPTER V. HER FATHER’S FRIEND. To the guests of Mrs. Murray the news of Italy’s sudden departure had proved as great a surprise as her coming. Mrs. Murray had simply announced that Italy Vale, after a misunderstanding with Francis, had left the house in a pet, going, no doubt, to Lawyer Gardner, her mother’s old friend, in Boston. Francis had gone to bring her back, but she supposed that the girl was too deeply offended to return. The lady had frankly told all that she knew. Her son had withheld from her his suspicions of Italy and the sleep-walking incident. It seemed to him a disloyal thing to betray her, so he kept everything hidden in his own breast. Mrs. Dunn and her niece, Alys, looked delighted at the news. Alexie and the two young men frankly expressed regret. “I was beginning to love her,” said Alexie, unmindful of her sister’s frown. “And so was Emmett, I think,” laughed Ralph Allen, with a twinkling glance of raillery at his friend Harlow. “Useless to attempt a denial. Circumstantial evidence convicts me,” was the gay retort. Mrs. Dunn looked disgusted. “I do not admire your taste,” she said tartly. “That foreign creature never had any attractions for me!” “Oh, Aunt Ione, she was very charming!” cried Alexie warmly, but her aunt silenced her with a scowl of displeasure, and Alys snapped rudely: “I hope she will never come back!” Mrs. Murray was too courteous to express her opinion aloud, but at heart she agreed with Alys Audenreid. Mrs. Dunn presently discovered that she wished to go to Boston that evening, to remain until the next day. “Some shopping,” she said carelessly, and declining the offered company of the girls, and promising to return the next afternoon, she made a smiling adieu and departed.