Chapter XXII: Remorse

The world of fashiondom that had been so shocked and astonished at the news from Selwyn Heights of the attempted murder of Mrs. St. Alban had another sensation a few days later when an item quite as startling as the first appeared in the newspapers.

“Death in the streets. A mysterious suicide. Night before last the drug-clerk at the store of Physic & Co. on B. street was very much startled at a late hour by the entrance of a beautiful young girl who asked for some laudanum for the tooth-ache. As she appeared to be suffering acute pain he complied with her request, but was horrified when he beheld her pause on the threshold, pull the stopper from the phial, and drain the last drop of the deadly narcotic poison. He immediately ran after her, but she rushed into the street and in a moment had entirely disappeared from sight. Mr. Meldrum, the clerk, gave the alarm to a passing policeman, but he failed to trace the mysterious suicide, and up to this date her body has not been recovered, although it is believed that she must surely have succeeded in her fell design of self-destruction. A clue to her identity is afforded in the fact that she dropped her handkerchief upon the floor of the shop where the clerk found it lying after she was gone. The perfumed bit of lace and embroidery was marked in the corner with the name Nina Strangemore. It is believed without a doubt that she was the desperate young wife who fled from Selwyn Heights after the attempted murder of her rival, Mrs. St. Alban. Her description tallies exactly with that of the missing Mrs. Strangemore, who was said to be brilliantly lovely, a dark-eyed blonde with rich golden hair, and a skin like lillies and roses. Her mournful suicide from remorse and despair furnishes the finale to her sad and romantic story of love, jealousy and revenge.”

What a passion of remorse, of horror, and despair, swept over Talbot Strangemore’s heart as he unfolded his morning paper still damp from the press, and read that dreadful paragraph. He threw the paper to his aunt without a word, and rising unsteadily from his chair at breakfast, went away to his room to lock himself in with that guilty conscience that rose up and called him to his face “Murderer!”

“She is dead, my fair young wife whom I neglected so long, and wronged so cruelly, and it was I that drove her to her death! I am her murderer. It was my folly and sin that broke her heart and sent her away from me in despair. I am morally guilty of her death, and I wish that the heavens would fall upon me and crush me out of my loathed existence!” he groaned, in a paroxysm of despair.

He was full of the bitterest self-shame and self-reproach. He knew that he had betrayed his mother’s trust. She had given him Nina so gladly, so confidingly, and he had forgotten the child who was his wife--forgotten and neglected her, and given the heart that belonged to her to another woman. And how fair, how lovely, how lovable she had been, this neglected bride of his? Keen arrows of remorse and self-reproach quivered through his heart as he realized all that he had done, all that he had brought about by his inexcusable folly and madness.

Under the same roof with himself, wounded, dying, perhaps, lay the woman who had so fatally beguiled him with her blue eyes and honeyed smiles. His mad and foolish infatuation for her was over. It had burned itself to ashes as by a flash of lightning in the instant when he had looked into his wife’s dark eyes and felt, with a throb of passionate joy, that that beautiful creature belonged to him by the nearest, dearest tie upon earth, his

“Other dearer life in life.”

Sibyl St. Alban lay at the point of death. He was sincerely sorry for her, but he could not believe that harm had reached her at the hands of Nina. He thought of the beautiful, dimpled white hands with their slender, taper fingers and rosy palms, and he could not believe that Sibyl’s blood was upon them. They were not strong enough nor cruel enough to have driven that dagger home in the white breast of her rival.

“I cannot, I will not think that she is guilty,” he had said, over and over to himself. “I must believe that she is innocent in spite of all the damning evidence in support of Sibyl’s accusation. Yes, although Nina declared to her face that she hated her, that she would never forgive her for what she had done, and prayed God to punish her for her sin, I will believe that her young soul is pure and unstained. I will try to find out how my letter to Nina came to be in Mrs. St. Alban’s room. I am sure my wife did not drop it there. Perhaps she sent it back to me in her righteous scorn and it fell into Sibyl’s hands, who knows? I could sooner believe that than the other! I have wronged my fair young wife enough already, and I will be loyal to her now. I will not even take her own terrible letter with its dreadful admissions as evidence against her. I could sooner think that in her frenzy of despair and humiliation she knew not what she was writing. Oh, my darling, if I only knew where to find you, how glad I would be, for something tells me that you will yet belong to me really and truly, and that we will yet be very happy together.”

All these things he had said over to himself many times since Nina’s flitting that awful night, and with the sanguine spirit of a young man, he had hoped for Nina’s return to him, had hoped that all might yet be well, and that he might make her so happy that she would forget the sad and unhappy past.

But that terrible paragraph he had just read in the paper struck down at one fell blow the rose-colored fabric of his hopes and dreams. She was dead, the beautiful, dark-eyed maiden who had been his wife in name only for five long years that he had spent in restless wanderings in foreign lands, chafing like a fool and a madman against the bondage that held him. In the dark and terrible hour that came to him now he cursed himself bitterly for his folly and his sin that had cost him so dear. He had been in sight of an earthly heaven, and had lost it by his willful blindness.

While he raved alone in his madness some one came to tell him that Sibyl St. Alban had that moment died.