gabbling tongue? Yes, and I'll speak more openly still before I
leave. Lady Rachel Sandal did not commit suicide as my mother said. She
was strangled, and by me."

Sylvia clapped her hands to her face with a scream. "By you?"

"Yes. She had a beautiful brooch. I wanted it. I was put to bed by my
mother, and kept thinking of the brooch. My mother was down the stairs
attending to your drunken father. I stole to Lady Rachel's room and
found her asleep. I tried to take the brooch from her breast. She woke
and caught at my hand. But I tore away the brooch and before Lady Rachel
could scream, I twisted the silk handkerchief she wore, which was
already round her throat, tighter. I am strong--I was always strong,
even as a girl of fifteen. She was weak from exhaustion, so she soon
died. My mother came into the room and saw what I had done. She was
terrified, and made me go back to bed. Then she tied Lady Rachel by the
silk handkerchief to the bedpost, so that it might be thought she had
committed suicide. My mother then came back to me and took the brooch,
telling me I might be hanged, if it was found on me. I was afraid, being
only a girl, and gave up the brooch. Then Captain Jessop raised the
alarm. I and my mother went downstairs, and my mother dropped the brooch
on the floor, so that it might be supposed Lady Rachel had lost it
there. Captain Jessop ran out. I wanted to give the alarm, and tell the
neighbors that Krill had done it--for I knew then he was not my father,
and I saw, moreover, how unhappy he made my mother. He caught me," said
Maud, with a fierce look, "and bound a handkerchief across my mouth. I
got free and screamed. Then he bound me hand and foot, and pinned my
lips together with the brooch which he picked off the floor. My mother
fought for me, but he knocked her down. Then he fled, and after a long
time Jessop came in. He removed the brooch from my mouth and unbound me.
I was put to bed, and Jessop revived my mother. Then came the inquest,
and it was thought that Lady Rachel had committed suicide. But she did
not," cried Maud, exultingly, and with a cruel light in her eyes, "I
killed her--I--"

"Oh," moaned Sylvia, backing against the wall with widely open eyes;
"don't tell me more--what horrors!"

"Bah, you kitten," sneered Maud, contemptuously, "I have not half done
yet. You have yet to hear how I killed Krill."

Sylvia shrieked, and sank back in her chair, staring with horrified eyes
at the cruel