“Who shall I say?”

Mr. Parmalee handed her his card.

“Give her that.  Tell her it’s a matter of life and death.”

The servant stared, took the pasteboard and vanished.  Ten minutes after, and Harriet, in a white morning robe, pale and terrified, hurried in.

“Mr. Parmalee, has anything—­have you heard——­ Oh, what is it?”

“It is this, Lady Kingsland:  your husband has been arrested and tried for your murder!”

She clasped her hands together and sunk into a seat.  She did not cry out or exclaim.  She sat aghast.

“He has been tried and condemned, and——­”

He could not finish the sentence, out of pity for that death-like face.

But she understood him, and a scream rang through the house which those who heard it might never forget.

“Oh, my God! he is condemned to be hanged!”

“He is,” said Mr. Parmalee; “but we’ll stop ’em.  Now, don’t you go and excite yourself, my lady, because you’ll need all your strength and presence of mind in this here emergency.  There’s a steamer for Liverpool to-morrow.  I secured our passage before I ever came here.”

“May the great God grant we be in time!  Oh, my love! my darling! my husband!  I never thought of this.  Let me but save you, and I am ready to die!”

“Only hear her!” cried the electrified artist, “talking like that about the man she thinks stabbed her.  I do believe she loves him yet.”

“With my whole heart.  I would die this instant to save him.  I love him as dearly as when I stood beside him at the altar a blessed bride.”

“Well, I’ll be darned,” burst out Mr. Parmalee, “if this don’t beat all creation!  Now, then, what would you give to know it was not Sir Everard who stabbed you that night?”

“Not Sir Everard?  But I saw him; I heard him speak.  He did it in a moment of madness, Mr. Parmalee, and Heaven only knows what anguish and remorse he has suffered since.”

“I hope so,” said Mr. Parmalee.  “I hope he’s gone through piles of agony, for I don’t like a bone in his body, if it comes to that.  But, I repeat, it was not your husband who stabbed you on the stone terrace that dismal night.  It was—­it was Sybilla Silver!”

“What?”

“Yes, ma’am—­sounds incredible, but it’s a fact.  She rigged out in a suit of Sir Everard’s clothes, mimicked his voice, and did the deed.  I saw her face when she pitched you over the rail as plain as I see your’n this minute, and I’m ready to swear to it through all the courts in Christendom.  She hated you like pisen, and the baronet, too, and she thinks she’s put an end to you both; but if we don’t give her an eye-opener pretty soon, my name ain’t Parmalee.”

She sunk on her knees and held up her clasped hands.

“Thank God! thank God! thank God!”

Next day they sailed for England.  The passage was all that could be desired, even by the impatience of Harriet.