Virginie, from a dark recess in the wall of the house, had heard and noted all that passed in the garden.  She saw Julia open and read the letter; she caught the expression of her face as she stooped for the pistol, and apprehending something of what might follow, she crept through the window after her mistress and pursued her up the dark passages.  Here, crouching again into a recess in the gallery outside the panelled room, she waited in terror for the next scene of the tragedy.  Julia flung open the door of the study where her father sat writing at his table, and, standing on the threshold in the full glare of the lamplight which illumined the apartment, raised the pistol, cocked and aimed it.  Sir Julian had barely time to leap from his chair with a cry when she fired, and the next instant he fell, struck by the bullet on the left temple, and expired at his daughter’s feet.  At the report of the pistol and the sound of his fall, Lady Sarah quitted her dressingroom and ran in disordered attire into the study, where she beheld her husband lying dead and bloody upon the floor, and Julia standing at the entrance of the panelled chamber, with the light of madness and murder in her eyes.  Not long she stood there, however, for, seeing Lady Sarah enter, the distracted girl threw down the empty weapon, and flinging herself upon her mother, grasped her throat with all the might of her frenzied being.  Up and down the room they wrestled together, two desperate women, one bent upon murder, the other battling for her life, and neither uttered cry or groan, so terribly earnest was the struggle.  At length Lady Sarah’s strength gave way; she fell under her assailant’s weight, her face black with suffocation, and her eyes protruding from their swelling sockets.  Julia redoubled her grip.  She knelt upon Lady Sarah’s breast, and held her down with the force and resolution of a fiend, though the blood burst from the ears of her victim and filmed her staring eyes; nor did the pitiless fingers relax until the murderess knew her vengeance was complete.  Then, she leapt to her feet, seized Philip’s pistol from the floor, and, with a wild, pealing shriek, fled forth along the gallery, down the staircase, and out into the park,—­out into the wind, and the driving snow, and the cold, her uncoiled hair streaming in dishevelled masses down her shoulders, and her dress of trailing satin daubed with stains of blood.  Behind her ran Virginie, well-nigh maddened herself with horror, vainly endeavouring to catch or to stop the unhappy fugitive.  But just as the latter reached the brink of a high precipice at the boundary of the terraced lawn, from which the mansion took its name of “Steepside,” she turned to look at her pursuer, missed her footing, and fell headlong over the low stone coping that bordered the slope into the snowdrift at the bottom of the chasm.

Virginie ran to the spot and looked over.  The “steep” was exceedingly high and sudden; not a trace of Julia could be seen in the darkness below.  Doubtless the miserable heiress of the Lorringtons had found a grave in the bed of soft, deep snow which surrounded its base.