their joint happiness by flying with him.  She sees nothing, however, in this, but a second attempt to ensnare her; and is repulsing the entreaty with the scorn which she believes it to deserve, when the younger man bursts merrily into the room.  A wave of angry pain passes over him as he recognizes the heroine of his own romance, and hastily infers from the circumstances in which he finds her, that he has been the victim of a double deception.  The truth gradually shapes itself in his mind; but meanwhile the older man has grasped the situation, and determined to make capital of it—­to avenge his rebuff and to rid himself of his debt at the same time.  He begs the lady to leave the room for a few moments, handing her, for her entertainment, the inn “album,” over which he and his friend were exchanging jokes a few hours ago; and in which he has, at this moment, inscribed some lines.  The purport of these is that this young man loves her; and that unless she responds to his advances, the secret of her past life shall be revealed to her husband.

Alone with the younger man, he exhausts himself in coarse libels against the woman, of whom that morning only he was speaking, as the lost opportunity of his life; bids him ask of her what he desires, and have it; and calls on him to admit, that in preserving him from marrying her, and placing her nevertheless at his disposal, he will have earned his gratitude, and paid the value of the ten thousand pounds.

When the woman returns, the album in her hand, the calm of death is upon her.  She has lived prepared for this emergency, provided also with the means of escaping from it.  But she will not die without entreating her young admirer to shake off, before it is too late, the evil influence to which both, though in different ways, have succumbed; and her dignity, her kindness, the instinctive reverence, and now chivalrous pity, with which she has inspired him carry all before them.  He renews his declaration; implores her to accept him as her husband, if she is free—­her friend if she is not; her husband even if the relation she is living in be something less than marriage; to exact any delay, to impose any probation, so that in the end she accepts him.

She replies by putting her hand into his, to remain there, as she says, till death shall part them.  The older man, who has just re-entered the room, congratulates them on having arrived at so sensible an understanding.  The woman, now very pale, contrives to point to the fatal entry in the album which she still grasps; and asks her friend—­after quoting the writer’s words—­how, but in her own way, the mouth of such a one could have been stopped.

“So,” exclaims the youth.  And he flies at the man’s throat, and strangles him.

She has only time to thank her deliverer; to tell him why his devotion is unavailing—­to provide for his safety by writing in the album from which he has torn the fatal page, that he has slain a man who would have outraged her:  and that her last breath is spent in blessing him.