"She started from the bed in her delirium; there came a rattling
sound in her throat--a sudden choking cry--and in a moment her breast
and pillow and quilt were deluged with a crimson stream! In her
paroxysm she had burst a blood-vessel. I sprang forward to catch
her as she fell prone upon the brick floor; raised her in my arms,
and gazed at her distorted features. There was no breath from the
reddened lips. Virginie Giraud was a corpse.

"Thus in her madness was told the secret of her life and her crime;
a secret she would not confess even to me in her sane moments. It
was no greed of gold, but despised and vindictive love that lay
behind all the horrors she had related. From my soul I pitied the
poor dead wretch, for I dimly comprehended what a hell her existence
on earth had been.

"The written account of the Steepside tragedy with which she had
intrusted me furnished, in somewhat briefer language, the story I
have just read to you, and many of its more important details have
subsequently been verified by me on application to other sources,
so that in that paper you have the testimony of an eyewitness to
the facts, as well as the support of legal evidence.

"Some forty years after Virginie's death, monsieur, family reasons
obliged me to seek temporary release from duty and come to England;
and, finding that circumstances would keep me in the country for
some time, I came here and went to see that house. But the tenant
at the lodge could only tell me that Steepside was empty then, and
had been empty for years past; and I have discovered that, since
that horrible 22nd of December, it never had an occupant. Sir