Chapter XXIV: “she Is Dead to All.”

“My little Nina, my sweet pupil, a murderess! No, no, never! I cannot believe it. That woman spoke falsely,” Mrs. Fielding cried, turning her white, horror-struck face upon her husband.

She held in her hand the paper with the paragraph relating to the murder at Selwyn Heights. Her face was white with terror, and her voice shook as she uttered her vehement disclaimer to the doctor.

“The case looks very dark against her,” he said, gravely, as he took the paper from her hand, and again ran his eyes hurriedly over it.

It was the morning after Nina had run away from the care of her kind friends, and the daily paper had brought the news of the tragical occurrence at Selwyn Heights. They had wondered much what had happened to Nina to drive her from her home in despair, and now they held the key to the mystery. Love and jealousy had been at the bottom of it as they are at the bottom of most of the tragedies of life.

“I will never believe that my sweet Nina is guilty of the murder,” Mrs. Fielding cried, loyally. “The deed was committed after she went away that night. I will go and show her this paper. I know she will be able to vindicate herself.”

She rose hurriedly from the breakfast table and was leaving the room, but her husband intercepted her.

“No, dear,” he said, “you must not do so. The consequence of such a procedure in my patient’s weak state would be most disastrous. If your faith in your friend’s innocence is so strong prove your loyalty by destroying that paper and never breathing to her one word of what you know.”

Mrs. Fielding gazed at him in mute dismay for a moment, and then she threw the paper into the fire, saying simply:

“I believe in Nina’s innocence just as firmly as I do in God and the angels, and I will do just as you say. I will never let her know that I have heard the things that bad and wicked people are saying about her.”

“That will be best,” he said, and in their pity and tenderness over the stricken young wife they kept their knowledge to themselves, and Nina remained blindly ignorant of the terrible accusation and the awful peril that remained suspended like a sword over her head.

The next day the Fielding’s morning paper, chronicled the attempted suicide of Nina at the drug-store. They read it with dismay.

“She is now dead to her husband and to all the world should she choose to remain so,” the good physician said, gravely, to his wife.

For Doctor Fielding had again become the instrument selected by Providence to snatch the wretched and desperate young creature from a reckless, self-sought death.

When Nina had stolen from his door in the storm and darkness of the preceding night he had been on the opposite side of the street about returning from his professional call, and having his eyes fixed on the tiny, little cottage he called home he beheld a sight that momentarily thrilled him with alarm and dread.

The front door had opened suddenly, and the bright light from the entry lamp had streamed out into the night. The broad glare revealed the slender graceful form of Nina poised on the threshold a moment, and in the next instant the whole scene was blotted out by darkness as she slammed the door behind her and hurried out into the street.

“Great heaven, she has escaped, and she will make another attempt at self-destruction,” Doctor Fielding ejaculated, hoarsely, and he dashed across the street in desperate pursuit.

“I can overtake her in a moment,” he thought confidently.

But in this he was mistaken. For one thing Nina had the start of him, and in the second place he could scarcely preserve his footing on the pavement which was like a sheet of ice with the sleet and snow that had been steadily coming down all day and freezing as it fell.

Making his best efforts to effect a swift transit over terra firma he found that he was not gaining in the least and that he could scarcely keep the flitting figure in sight as it hurried on beneath the glare of the gaslights.

When she was more than a block ahead of him he saw her disappear into the drug-store whose ruddy colored lights streamed out athwart the gloomy darkness of the night.

He instantly divined her terrible purpose, and with horror-thrilled pulses redoubled his efforts to overtake her. Though his feet threatened to fly from beneath him every moment, he fairly flew over the pavement. He was almost abreast with the drug-store when Nina reappeared in the lurid light of the door-way, drained the phial of laudanum to the last drop, and flashed out and on though the darkness.

He gave a single downward glance at the phial lying label upward, with the staring skull and cross-bones and the black letters laudanum, then he rushed after her in desperate pursuit.

She, poor child, fainting with the horror of what she had done, and believing that death would overtake her in a few moments, had slipped into a secluded alley-way, and crouched down in a heap, waiting despairingly for the end, with a murmured prayer on her trembling lips:

“Dear papa, dear mamma, and dear Lord, pardon me for what I have done!”

And so Doctor Fielding found her.

There was no time to be lost, and he uttered no word, raised no alarm. He had a small case of medicine and instruments in his pocket. He set to work then and there to relieve his patient of the deadly drug she had swallowed. The intense cold was a help rather than a hindrance to his efforts, and in a short time he was successful. She was dumb and passive in his hands, feeling that fate was too strong for her.

No one passed, no one ever dreamed that in that narrow alley-way, on that wild March night, Death had been cheated of his prey, and presently Doctor Fielding drew Nina’s hand through his arm and led her quietly home again almost before his wife had missed her.