Chapter XXXI: The Arrest of Nina

Miss Drusilla looked profoundly vexed and annoyed at her niece’s answer.

“Nina, you are certainly a most unmitigated little simpleton! I really have no patience with you,” she remarked. “It was ridiculous for you to think of blotting yourself out like that for Talbot Strangemore. He is not worth it, indeed no man is worth the sacrifice of a woman’s life. I have always despised men, and my nephew’s conduct has only made me dislike them worse. What was he, what kindness had he ever done you, that you should have given up your life for him? I wish he had died before he ever came back to make all this trouble. I am sure I hate him, even if he was my brother’s son!”

“So do we all,” Kitty muttered under her breath, but not so low but that Nina caught it.

She looked reproachfully at them both.

“Oh, Aunt Drusilla, oh, Kitty, please do not talk about my husband like that! I used to love him so much,” she pleaded.

“And love him still, eh?” the spinster asked, half-vexedly, half-pityingly.

“Oh, no, no, no,” Nina tried to say, but a great sob rose in her throat and choked her.

“You need not try to tell me a fib, child. I know just how weak and silly women’s hearts are. Go on loving your husband as much as you like. Perhaps he will turn out more worthy of your love some day. I wish I knew where to write to him now. He ought to come home to you,” Miss Drusilla said, thoughtfully.

“No, not for worlds!” Nina gasped, in horror, “Do not send for him, please. I will not stay to meet him!”

“Nonsense, child, you need him now. His place is by your side to shield you and protect you,” said the old lady, impressively.

Something in the tone and air struck Nina. She looked up inquiringly.

“What do you mean?” she asked, and Miss Drusilla felt that no task she had ever undertaken in her life was as hard as that which lay before her now.

“I cannot tell her the whole truth. I will temporize with her,” she finally decided, and so, looking as calmly as she could into the pale, sweet face, she said:

“I mean that Talbot ought to be here to silence any malicious tongues that may wag over that dying falsehood of Sibyl St. Alban.”

There was a minute’s silence. The pale face on the pillow grew, if possible, still paler.

“Does any one credit that cruel story?” she asked, faintly, and suddenly Kitty flung herself down on her knees by the bed.

“Oh, Miss Nina, darling, you can prove that you did not do it, can’t you, dear?” she cried. “What time was it when you went away that night, because the murder was not committed until midnight, and if you can prove that you went away before that time no one can believe aught against you.”

“Indeed, Kitty, I do not know what time it was when I went away. I was so wretched, so humiliated by my own madness that I took no thought of time!”

“But after you sent me away, Miss Nina, you went away at _once_--that was the way, wasn’t it, darling?” Kitty asked, anxiously.

“Let me think a moment, Kitty.” She put her hand to her brow in a bewildered way, then answered. “No, I did not go away then, for after you were gone Mrs. St. Alban came into my room to talk to me about my husband.”

“The viper! What could she have to say about Talbot?” flashed Miss Strangemore.

“She wanted to tell me how unhappy they both were and how I had ruined all their lives by marrying Talbot. She wanted me to consent to a divorce that he wanted to have so that he might marry her,” Nina answered, bitterly.

“The she-devil!” Miss Drusilla cried, violently. “How did she dare talk to you so? She was brazen-faced indeed! I hope you ordered her out of the room, Nina.”

“I asked her to go, I think, but not until I told her that she should have Talbot for her own soon,” the girl answered, wearily.

“You meant to consent to a divorce?” the maiden lady cried, aghast, and all the pride of the Selwyn’s flashed from Nina’s eyes as she answered:

“No, never!”

“What, then?”

“I meant to throw away my life, and so set him free and make him happy.”

“But you were committing a deadly sin. Did you think of that?”

“Perhaps so, I don’t know. I remember that I asked God to forgive me when I sprang into the cold water.”

“You went away directly after that woman left you?” the lady asked her, anxiously, and her heart sank when Nina answered, sadly:

“No, not just at once. I was so hurt, so shocked at the thought that Talbot actually contemplated divorcing me, that I sat like one stunned for some time, going over and over in my mind the humiliating thought. I rose at last mechanically, put some dark garments on, and went away down to the shore and flung myself into the sea.”

“But after all it could not have been midnight when you went, Nina,” said Miss Strangemore, and the tremor of deep anxiety in her voice struck the girl oddly.

“Indeed I do not know, I cannot remember,” she said. “But it does not matter very much, I suppose.”

They turned it off as lightly as possible, but their strange questions, their confused answers, awakened her suspicions. The truth began to dawn upon her mind.

She sat up in bed looking almost unearthly, with her great, startled dark eyes and her deathly white face.

“You are frightened over something, both of you. Is it about me?” she asked.

And then Kitty went and sat down behind her on the bed and put her arms about the slender form. Nina turned her face to her.

“Can anybody punish me, Kitty, because I tried to kill myself?”

“No, dear--no one but God, and He will forgive you if you ask him.”

In a minute she asked another question.

“Can anyone punish me because that dreadful woman said falsely that I killed her?”

“Not if you can prove that she lied,” Miss Drusilla answered.

“But if”--and all in a minute a ghastly change came over the lovely, stricken young face, “oh, Aunt Drusilla, what if I cannot prove it?”

* * * * *

It was all over. They never quite remembered in what words they had told her the truth, but they never forgot the wail of agony that came from her lips as she put her white hand to her throat and said, with an awful shudder:

“They will try me for murder and then they will put a rope around my neck and hang me!”

Then there had followed another season of blank unconsciousness. This time Miss Drusilla had not lifted a finger to help her back to life. She had sternly forbidden Kitty, too.

“We both love her,” she said, “Let us have mercy upon her. Let us pray God to take her suffering spirit back to himself.”

It did not seem to them that they were doing wrong, they were wrought up to so high a pitch of frenzy by the dread of the future. They stood by her senseless body without lifting a finger and they silently implored Heaven that she might never awaken from her swoon.

But their wild wishes were not to be granted. The vitality in the girl’s young frame was not exhausted yet. She struggled back to life unaided, and then they realized all that lay before them, the peril, the danger that they must try to avert.

“We must hide her,” they said to each other. “We will take her back to Doctor Fielding. He is strong and wise. He will tell us what to do.”

And for the first time since Talbot went away his aunt regretted that he had left her no address to which to write.

“I shall be a remorseful, broken-hearted wanderer all over the wide world, and it is not likely that I shall ever return here,” he had said, and in her wrath against him she had let him go, not forseeing this moment when she should vainly long to warn him of his wife’s peril.... The first gray beams of dawn were beginning to glimmer in the sky when three heavily veiled women stole out from the portals of the great house and went swiftly and silently down the long avenue.

But fast as they went the law had traveled faster. Two men came in at the tall gate--men in official clothing, with hats drawn over their brows as if ashamed of their mission. One advanced and laid a heavy hand upon one of the vailed figures leaving the house. She gave a startled cry and drew back, but he held her fast.

“Mrs. Strangemore, you are under arrest for the murder of Mrs. St. Alban,” he said, in an official tone.