The Midnight Guest by Fred M. White — Read

It was well into the following afternoon when the trained nurse came quietly down the stairs, and announced to Lord Ravenspur that her task was finished. Silva had died in his sleep. The troubled spirit was at rest, the tardy confession had been made, and Lord Ravenspur had no longer any occasion to fear the vengeance that had followed him so long. There would have to be an inquest, of course -- as there was. But there was nothing much here to arouse public curiosity. A servant at the house on the common had been severely mauled by a savage dog prowling about, and he had succumbed to the shock. The newspapers had a few paragraphs, but in a day or two the incident was forgotten, nor was there any occasion to worry the owner of the house, seeing that the place had been taken by Silva in the proper name of his mistress. The servants had seen nothing either, so that scandal was entirely checked.

It would, perhaps, be a difficult matter later on to explain the unexpected reappearance of Vera's mother, but it seemed to Ravenspur that he could see a way to solve that problem. And after the lapse of eighteen years, nobody would identify the Countess Flavio with the Italian scandal that had been a sensation in Europe back in the 'eighties. Ravenspur and the Countess were good enough friends now, and Mrs. Delahay was beginning to recover her health and strength again. Already the Fitzjohn Square murder had ceased to occupy public attention now that the tragedy had been solved, and there was no chance of the culprit being brought before an earthly tribunal. As to Cooney, he got off quite as lightly as he deserved. And there are always new sensations to follow the old.