"MYSTERIOUS DEATH IN HAYTHORN STREET, S.W.
"A tragic occurrence of more than ordinary public interest occurred in Haythorn Street, S.W., last night. The young actress, Miss Vera Anerley, whose attractive performances at the ---- Theatre we have already recorded, returned home to find her only and favourite brother, Victor a'Court, lying lifeless on the sofa in his room. The doctor, who was at once secured, pronounced life extinct, and by certain appearances, suggested suicide. At the inquest some sensational evidence seems likely to be given."
"Yes," she thought, as she struggled to the window, flung it open, and leant against the lintel, gasping, fighting for breath in her threatened faintness--her eyes were unable to see properly, there was a surging and roaring in her ears--he was dead--dead! And she--legally his wife--had killed him.
"I poisoned him!" she mentally told herself, in a species of dazed, wondering incredulity. "I sent him to face God--all his sins on his soul--oaths on his lips! I am lost--eternally--for ever--lost!"
It seemed to her as if a huge, yawning gulf had arisen between her and all clean, honest human beings. Her past life lay the other side. She had done the worst of all deeds. She had destroyed a fellow creature.
"And--my own soul with him!" she groaned, in her extremity of fear and horror. The climax of her life seemed to her over, now that she knew--realized--the fact. After the first awful minutes, a dull, dead calm took the place of her overwhelming, hideous agony. She could see and hear again. As she leant against the wall she noted two smart young nurses in white, wheeling their perambulators out of the enclosure below. She saw one of them turn and lock the gate--she heard the key grate in the lock, and the other girl cry out sharply, "Master Dickie, leave it alone!" as a handsome little fellow in white knickers laid hold of the handle of the little carriage. Then a fox-terrier ran by, barking, and a tradesman's cart rattled swiftly along. A coster sent up his long-drawn-out cry in the distance. And--and--she was a murderess!
She laughed aloud, and then, frightened by the irresponsibility of her actions, she crawled slowly, miserably, across the room, gulped down a glass of water, and bathed her face. As she did so, she sickened--remembering how he had gasped--"water, water!" If only that choking prayer had told her that he was in danger--why, she would have risked discovery, disgrace, even the loss of Vansittart, to save the life she had endangered.
She recalled her former fancied love for the slim, handsome young foreigner. How she had admired him as he gazed fatuously at her in church! What a subtle, delicious excitement there had been in his veiled wooing, their hardly-obtained, schemed-for clandestine meetings! Her mother's death had destroyed the glamour of the pseudo love affair. Still, he had had sufficient compelling power over her emotions to bring her to marry him secretly. Then, of course, the thunderbolt had fallen which had destroyed her girlish passion at a blow--the exposé--the discovery that he was an absconding criminal.
"Still--nothing--nothing--can excuse me--from first to last," she acknowledged to herself, in despair. "I am--lost! Fit only to consort with the creatures who are for ever the enemies of God."
Just as she told herself this, with a pitiful sob, there was a knock at the door. "May I come in? I have something for you!" cried her uncle, cheerily.