!"

"Not yet; you have heard but half the truth. Oh, potent Prince of
Kingsland, hear me out! You will be hanged tomorrow morning for
murdering your wife! You didn't murder her, did you? Who do you
suppose did it?"

He rose to his feet, staggered back against the wall, his eyes starting
from their sockets.

"Great God!"

"Ah, you anticipate, I see. Yes, my lord of Kingsland, I murdered your
pretty little wife! Keep off! I have a pistol here, and I'll blow
your brains out if you come one step nearer--if you utter a word! I
don't want to cheat Jack Ketch, if I can. And it is no use your crying
for help--there is no one to hear, and these stone walls are thick.
Stand there, my rich, my noble, my princely brother, and listen to the
truth."

He stood, holding by the wall, paralyzed with horror.

"Yes, I murdered her!" Sybilla reiterated, with sneering triumph.
"Disguised in your clothes, using your dagger; and she died, believing
it to be you. All I told, and all the boy Dawson told at the trial was
true as the Heaven you believe in. Your wife was true as truth, pure
as the angels. She loved only you--she loved you with her whole heart
and soul. Her vow by the bedside of her dying father chained her
tongue. To save you the shame, the humiliation of learning the truth
about her degraded mother, she met in secret this Mr. Parmalee. On
that night she went to the stone terrace to see her mother, for the
first, the last, the only time. I arranged it all--I lured her
there--I stabbed her, and flung her over into the sea! I hated her for
your sake--I hated her for her own. And to-morrow, for my crime, you
will die!"

And still he gazed, paralyzed, stunned, speechless.

"Poor fool!" she said, with unutterable scorn--"poor, blind, besotted
fool! and this is the end of all! Young, handsome, rich, high-born,
surrounded by friends, the wealthy and the great, one woman's work
brings you to this! I have said my say, and now I leave you; here we
part, Sir Everard Kingsland. Call the jailer; tell him what I have
told you--tell it through the length and breadth of the land, if you
choose. Not one will believe you. It is an utterly mad and impossible
tale. I have only to calmly and scornfully deny it. And to-morrow,
when the glorious sun rises I will be far away. In Spain, the land of
my mother and my grandmother, I go to join our race--to become a
dweller in tents--a gypsy, free as the wind that blows. T