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.  The gold your lavish hand has given me will make me and my tribe rich for life.  I go to be their queen.  Farewell, Sir Everard Kingsland.  My half hour has expired; the jailer comes to let me out.  But first I go straight from here to Kingsland Court, to tell your mother what I have just told you—­to tell her her idolized son dies for my crime, and to kill her, if I can, with the news.”

The door swung open—­Miss Silver flitted out.  It broke the spell.  The prisoner started forward, tried hoarsely, vainly to speak.  Enfeebled by long illness, by repeated shocks, he staggered a pace or two and fell face forward at the jailer’s feet like a log.