“He is very magnanimous,” I remarked, coldly; “I shall be glad to have my diamonds though, in my own possession, I acknowledge, but why does he make any parade about it at all?  They are mine all the same, whether in his hands or my own.  Every thing that man does seems theatrical and affected to me!”

“I thought you were beginning to incline very favorably to Cagliostro!  I am sure this was the opinion of all who saw you together at Saratoga, and I believe, between ourselves, it is his own.”

“Evelyn Erie, you know better than this!  People, of themselves, would never have dreamed of such a thing, and he, too, knows my sentiments thoroughly.  He only feigns ignorance.”

“My dear, dear girl! worse things than this have been said frequently, and stranger ones have come to pass.  Mr. Bainrothe is certainly a splendid financier, that was your own father’s opinion.  You will never marry any man who will take better care of your money, and that is a consideration with you, or ought to be, Miriam.  Your estate is your chief distinction, child, if you only knew it; besides, with a knowledge of your constitutional malady, you should be very careful what hands you fall into.  No woman that I know of demands such peculiar care and tenderness from a husband, nor such choice in her surroundings.  After all, Mr. Bainrothe is still a very handsome man, and admirably well preserved if not exactly young; he does not look forty, he has not a gray hair, a false tooth, nor a wrinkle.”

“Have you done, Evelyn Erie?” I asked, almost ferociously.  “Have you completed your catalogue of insult?  Then listen, in turn, to my counsel.  Marry him yourself by all means; he would suit you, body and soul, far better than me.  Indeed, I have never seen any one else who seemed so thoroughly your counterpart, match and mate, as Cagliostro!”

“Thank you,” she said, furiously; “if I thought you were in earnest”—­here she hesitated, clinching her hand, and biting her white lips.

“I am in earnest,” I rejoined, quietly; “what then?” and I looked coldly, resolutely in her face.

“Why I would perhaps marry the son, just to correct your fallacious idea about the father, that is all!  This course is shut out from you, however, entirely, by your own folly, so you must take what you can get now, for Claude Bainrothe, let me assure you, is lost to you forever.”  And she went out, smiling triumphantly.

I suspected from that hour what I knew later, and I had suffered the last pang to agonize my heart that my broken troth should ever cost me.  The corpse of my dead love had bled at the touch of its murderer, in accordance with ancient superstition.  Now, calm and quiet oblivion and the sepulchre should surround and enshroud it forever more.