She ended, pensively.  The languor of reaction seemed stealing over her, but it only made her more charming as she leaned still farther back on the soft cushions, watching the point of her tiny foot tracing the pattern of the carpet.

“What a brilliant horoscope!” said Guy; “and so benevolently sketched, too!  Now your own, Improvisatrice.”

“I shall marry too,” she answered, gravely.  “I ought to have done so long ago.  Perhaps I shall make up my mind soon.  Evil examples are so contagious.”

“And who will draw the great prize?”

“I have not the faintest idea.  I suppose some fine old English gentleman, who has a great estate.”

“I only hope the said estate will be near Kerton,” Livingstone suggested; and he drew closer to his companion.

“Ah! dear old Kerton,” she said, sighing again, “I shall never go there any more.”

“The reason?”

“Perhaps because my husband, whoever he may be, will not choose to bring me.”

“Absurd!” Guy retorted, biting his lip hard.  “As if that individual would have any will of his own.  You want to provoke me, I see.”

The answer came in so low a whisper that, though he bent his ear down, he had almost to guess at the words.

“No, I have never tried to do that, even during the last three months.  I am not brave enough.  Perhaps I should not come, because—­I could not bear it.”

They were silent.  She was so near him now that her quick breath stirred his hair, and he could feel the pulse of her heart beating against his own side.  The fiery Livingstone blood, heated seven-fold by wine and passion, was surging through his veins like molten iron.  Memory and foresight were both swept away like withered leaves by the strength of the terrible temptation.

His arm stole round her waist, and he drew her toward him—­close—­closer yet; then she looked up in his face.  The cloud of thoughtful gravity has passed away from hers, and the provocations of a myriad of coquettes and courtesans concentrated in her marvelous eyes.

He bent down his lofty head, and instantly their lips met, and were set together fast.

A kiss!  Tibullus, Secundus, Moore, and a thousand other poets and poetasters, have rhymed on the word for centuries, decking it with the choicest and quaintest conceits.  But, remember, it was with a kiss that the greatest of all criminals sealed the unpardonable sin—­it was a kiss which brought on Francesca punishment so unutterably piteous that he swooned at the sight who endured to look on all other terrors of nine-circled hell.

CHAPTER XXI.

         “God help thee, then! 
       I’ll see thy face no more. 
     Like water spilled upon the plain,
     Not to be gathered up again,
       Is the old love I bore.”

Before that long caress was ended, close behind them there broke forth a low, plaintive cry, such as might be wrung from the bravest of delicate women, in her extremity of pain, when stricken by a heavy brutal hand.