unable to stay in one place, tormented by confused aspirations, and by desires which I cannot formulate.  What can I do?  Seek oblivion in pleasure and dissipation?  I try, and I succeed for an hour or so; but the reaction comes, and the effect vanishes, like froth from champagne.  The lassitude returns; and, whilst outwardly I continue to laugh, I shed within tears of blood which scald my heart.  What is to become of me, without a memory in the past, or a hope in the future, upon which to rest my thought?”

And bursting into tears,

“Oh, I am wretchedly unhappy!” she exclaimed; “and I wish I was dead.”

M. de Tregars rose, feeling more deeply moved than he would, perhaps, have liked to acknowledge.

“I was laughing at you only a moment since,” he said in his grave and vibrating voice.  “Pardon me, mademoiselle.  It is with the utmost sincerity, and from the innermost depths of my soul, that I pity you.”

She was looking at him with an air of timid doubt, big tears trembling between her long eyelashes.

“Honest?” she asked.

“Upon my honor.”

“And you will not go with too poor an opinion of me?”

“I shall retain the firm belief that when you were yet but a child, you were spoiled by insane theories.”

Gently and sadly she was passing her hand over her forehead.

“Yes, that’s it,” she murmured.  “How could I resist examples coming from certain persons?  How could I help becoming intoxicated when I saw myself, as it were, in a cloud of incense when I heard nothing but praises and applause?  And then there is the money, which depraves when it comes in a certain way.”

She ceased to speak; but the silence was soon again broken by a slight noise, which came from the adjoining room.

Mechanically, M. de Tregars looked around him.  The little parlor in which he found himself was divided from the main drawing-room of the house by a tall and broad door, closed only by heavy curtains, which had remained partially drawn.  Now, such was the disposition of the mirrors in the two rooms, that M. de Tregars could see almost the whole of the large one reflected in the mirror over the mantelpiece of the little parlor.  A man of suspicious appearance, and wearing wretched clothes, was standing in it.

And, the more M. de Tregars examined him, the more it seemed to him that he had already seen somewhere that uneasy countenance, that anxious glance, that wicked smile flitting upon flat and thin lips.

But suddenly the man bowed very low.  It was probable that Mme. de Thaller, who had gone around through the hall to reach the grand parlor, must be coming in; and in fact she almost immediately appeared within the range of the glass.  She seemed much agitated; and, with a finger upon her lips, she was recommending to the man to be prudent, and to speak low.  It was therefore in a whisper, and such a low whisper that not even a vague murmur reached the little parlor, that the man uttered a few words.  They were such that the baroness started back as if she had seen a precipice yawning at her feet; and by this action it was easy to understand that she must have said,