Chapter XXVII: Back to Selwyn Heights

The great house on Selwyn Heights where that dreadful tragedy had so lately been enacted loomed up dark and stern and stately in the soft spring moonlight. The salty breath of the sea came up over the high bluff and mingled with the perfume of flowers in the spacious terraced grounds. In the great mansion everything was still and silent as the spell of the midnight hour fell over all.

“Midnight was come, and every vital thing
With sweet sound sleep their weary limbs did rest;
The beasts were still, the little birds that sing,
Now sweetly slept beside their mother’s breast.”

Miss Drusilla Strangemore, the grim guardian of Selwyn Heights in the absence of its master, slumbered peacefully in her room, the domestics had all retired hours ago. Surely no one could detect her now, thought the fair young mistress of that stately home, as she stole along through the dark, deserted halls, and entered her own especial chamber, stealthily, like a thief in the night.

Blank darkness met her as she groped her way to the toilet table and lighted one of the wax candles that always stood in the silver sconces beside the long mirror. A pale, clear flame streamed athwart the darkness, and showed her the dear familiar room looking so dainty and home like, yet withal having such an air of loneliness and desertion that Nina burst into quick tears of sympathy and sorrow for the girl who had lived there so long with her happy love-dream only to have it rudely dispelled at last.

“It seems as if it were some other girl and not me, little Nina Selwyn, who bore all that cross of sorrow. I can scarcely realize that it was really I, for since my long illness I seem to have grown years older and graver,” she thought, as she wiped away her tears and looked around her for her little jewel case.

There it stood in its old familiar place, and the little key was in her purse. She hurriedly unlocked it, threw back the lid, and her treasures of gold and precious stones lay revealed--diamonds and rubies and pearls, emeralds, amethysts, cameos--all flashing back the light in shimmering radiance. They were the accumulated treasures of the dead and gone Selwyns, and she, the last descendant of that proud old race, caught up a great broad neck-let of rubies that lay nearest her hand and let it shine a moment in the light.

“They look like blood,” she cried, and dropped them back with a strange thrill almost of fear.

“What if I should take some of these jewels of mine? They would make the Fieldings rich. They would keep me from want all my life,” she murmured.

But in a moment she put away the temptation firmly.

“No, I must not take them, even though they are really mine. They might be missed some day, and an innocent person be suspected of the larceny--my own faithful Kitty, perhaps! I will leave them all. They will belong to my faithless husband now. Perhaps he will be heartless enough, some day, to adorn my rival with them--the dainty beauty who ruined my life,” she said, bitterly.

She laid all the glittering things upon the table, and lifted out the false bottom of the box, whose secret was known only to herself. There, on the soft satin cushion of the real bottom, lay the bank-notes she had laid there nearly three months ago. She crammed them hastily into her purse, and then rearranged the box and the jewels, locking it, and taking away the key as before.

“Only five hundred dollars out of the millions my father left me! Talbot may have all the rest!” she said, sadly, as she prepared to go.

But suddenly she gave a wild start of terror, and the candle she was about to extinguish fell from her shaking hands to the floor, and left her in total darkness, while she gasped in despair, for a pair of warm, loving arms had been thrown around her, and the voice of her own dear Kitty was saying in eager joy and triumph:

“Oh, Miss Nina, dear, darling child, so it is really yourself, and not your ghost that walked by night as they said? Oh, my dear young mistress, my poor wronged baby, why did you run away from us that awful night?”