The hand which, but a few years before, had, unsuspected, consigned a fellow-mortal to the grave, had itself avenged the murder—­Marston had perished by his own hand.

Naturally ambitious and intriguing, the perilous tendencies of such a spirit in Mademoiselle de Barras had never been schooled by the mighty and benignant principles of religion; of her accidental acquaintance at Rouen with Sir Wynston Berkley, and her subsequent introduction, in an evil hour, into the family at Gray Forest, it is unnecessary to speak.  The unhappy terms on which she found Marston living with his wife, suggested, in their mutual alienation, the idea of founding a double influence in the household; and to conceive the idea, and to act upon it, were, in her active mind, the same.  Young, beautiful, fascinating, she well knew the power of her attractions, and determined, though probably without one thought of transgressing the limits of literal propriety, to bring them to bear upon the discontented, retired roue, for whom she cared absolutely nothing, except as the instrument, and in part the victim of her schemes.  Thus yielding to the double instinct that swayed her, she gratified, at the same time, her love of intrigue and her love of power.  At length, however, came the hour which demanded a sacrifice to the evil influence she had hitherto worshipped on such easy terms.  She found that her power must now be secured by crime, and she fell.  Then came the arrival of Sir Wynston—­his murder—­her elopement with Marston, and her guilty and joyless triumph.  At last, however, came the blow, long suspended and terrific, which shattered all her hopes and schemes, and drove her once again upon the world.  The catastrophe we have just described.  After it she made her way to Paris.  Arrived in the capital of France, she speedily dissipated whatever remained of the money and valuables which she had taken with her from Gray Forest; and Madame Marston, as she now styled herself, was glad to place herself once more as a governess in an aristocratic family.  So far her good fortune had prevailed in averting the punishment but too well earned by her past life.  But a day of reckoning was to come.  A few years later France was involved in the uproar and conflagration of revolution.  Noble families were scattered, beggared, decimated; and their dependants, often dragged along with them into the flaming abyss, in many instances suffered the last dire extremities of human ill.  It was at this awful period that a retribution so frightful and extraordinary overtook Madame Marston, that we may hereafter venture to make it the subject of a separate narrative.  Until then the reader will rest satisfied with what he already knows of her history; and meanwhile bid a long, and as it may possibly turn out, an eternal farewell to that beautiful embodiment of an evil and disastrous influence.