Chapter XVI: The Flight of Nina

Several days after that tragic night at Selwyn Heights a sensational item appeared in the Baltimore papers and was thence copied widely into other journals.

“A thrilling tragedy. A jealous wife murders her beautiful rival and makes a successful flight from justice. A fine old family disgraced by the crime of its last remaining descendant.”

Under that heading came the following:

“Many members of the _bon ton_ in this city will remember the beautiful Mrs. St. Alban, who about two years ago was the star of a season here, and who at the death of her husband went abroad with a party of friends in the splendid yacht of our citizen, Marmaduke Cameron. This lady recently returned from Europe and during a visit at Selwyn Heights, the seaside home of her friend, Mr. Talbot Strangemore, she was cruelly murdered by the young wife of the latter gentleman. Rumor accredited Mr. Strangemore with a penchant for the charming widow which so enraged the beautiful young wife that she publicly declared her hatred and jealousy of Mrs. St. Alban, and that night she stealthily entered the young widow’s room and assaulted her with a sharp dagger which she left lying upon the floor when she fled from the scene. Mrs. St. Alban is now lying at the point of death at Selwyn Heights, and there is not the faintest hope of her recovery. Her dying deposition accuses Mrs. Strangemore with the crime, and her testimony is strangely supported by the fact that a letter, addressed to Mrs. Strangemore and written by her husband, was found in Mrs. St. Alban’s room, where the jealous wife had most probably dropped it in making her hasty escape. The whole affair is extremely distressing. All the parties belong to the best society, and the crime of the jealous wife has covered with ignominy the name of a fine old family of which she is the last living descendant. It is said that some members of her household will not believe in her guilt, but all the evidence is against her, and her mysterious, unexplained absence of itself is a tacit admission of her sin. Vigorous search is now being made for her, but as yet without success.”

All Baltimore rang with that sensation. Many recalled the beautiful fairy, coquettish Mrs. St. Alban, the bride of the rich manufacturer Ralph St. Alban. He was twice as old as she was, having been her father’s friend at college, and no one supposed that the poor professor’s daughter was in love with her elderly spouse, or that she grieved much when he suddenly died after three years of wedded bliss and left her a wealthy and attractive young widow. She had been a flirt of the most pronounced order, dreaded alike by plain wives and pretty young girls, and now when this story of the tragedy appeared, many said that they were not surprised at the fate that had befallen her. She had always had too strong a _penchant_ for the sweethearts and husbands of other women, and now Nemesis had overtaken her at last. There was a great deal of silent but intense sympathy with the young wife who had been goaded to desperation and crime by her cruel wrongs. More than one woman who had been insolently rivaled by triumphant Sibyl thought furtively within herself that the little coquette had only got what she deserved.

While Rumor repeats with its thousand barbed tongues the story of the tragedy at Selwyn Heights, let us follow the flight of hapless Nina, reader mine, when she stole forth that night, wretched and despairing, from the shelter of her beautiful home.

Nina had fled from Selwyn Heights with the idea of self-destruction uppermost in her mind. She had brooded morbidly over her promise to Mrs. Selwyn, until it assumed the proportions of a solemn oath in her eyes. She believed that she was solemnly bound to ignore and sacrifice herself, if in no other way the happiness of Talbot Strangemore could be secured.

“I would sooner die by my own act than be divorced from him that he may marry another woman. I could not live under such shame and ignominy as that!” she cried, passionately, for she had come of a proud race, and she inherited all of their pride and nobility. And then she clasped her beautiful hands together and added, with bitter pathos:

“The sorrow would be as great as the shame, for, oh, I love him still, in spite of all that has passed; I love him still, and I believe that I shall always love him! I have worshipped him so truly for five long years, have studied, read, practiced, all to improve myself for his sake, that it would be impossible now to live and look on him as the husband of another woman. It would be easier to die!”

And so she had gone away, leaving behind her a pathetic little note, whose incoherent sentences only made another terrible link against her in the evidence that convicted her of a fearful sin.

“My husband,” she wrote, and a great burning tear splashed on the word, and almost blotted it out; “I am going away out of your life forever! I know all now, and I take the only way I can think of to free you from the fetters that chafe you so cruelly. May God forgive me for what I am going to do to-night, for I am so maddened by my wrongs that I am not accountable. But you will be free, you will be happy, and I ask no more of fate. Do not blame me when they tell you of the awful deed I have done. Only remember that I was driven mad by my wrongs, and that my oath to your dying mother compelled me to the deed.”

To that strangely ambiguous note she signed her name in full, “Nina Selwyn Strangemore,” and then she laid it conspicuously upon the toilet table, and left the room, locking the door outside, and taking the key away that her flight might not be discovered until morning.

“I shall be dead then--dead in the deep sea, or perhaps the cold waves will cast me back upon the sands, and he will behold my dead face and rejoice that he is free to marry his beloved Sibyl,” she said and she went on steadily to the place where day after day she and Lion had waited for the ship that would bring Talbot home. She had a fancy that on that spot where she had stood so often she would seek her death.

How dark was the night, how dark the sea! No one saw the slender black-clad figure stealing along the shore going to her death.

“Mad from life’s history,
Glad to death’s mystery.”

Behind her on the tall heights stood her stately home, the goodly inheritance her father had left his child. She looked back just once at its gloomy towers with a farewell on her lips.

“It will belong to Talbot now--Talbot and his blue-eyed love,” she murmured, and with a prayer to heaven for peace and pardon she sprang desperately into the cold, black water.