And as she spoke, she drew the little bottle from its hiding-place in her bosom, and Norbert too well understood her meaning.  The young man endeavored to take it from her, but she resisted.  This contest seemed to exhaust her little strength, her beautiful eyes closed, and she sank senseless into Norbert’s arms.  In an agony of despair, the young man asked himself if she was dying; and yet there was sufficient life in her to enable her to whisper, soft and low, these words, “My only friend—­let me have it back, dear Norbert.”  And then, with perfect clearness, she repeated all the deadly properties of the drug, and the directions for its use that the Counsellor had given to her.

On hearing the woman whom he loved with such intense passion confess that she would sooner die than live apart from him, Norbert’s brain reeled.

“Diana, my own Diana!” repeated he, as he hung over her.

But she went on, as though speaking through the promptings of delirium.

“The very day after such a fair prospect!  Ah, Duke de Champdoce!  You are a hard and pitiless man.  You have robbed me of all I held dear in the world, blackened my reputation, and tarnished my honor, and now you want my life.”

Norbert uttered such a cry of anger, that even Daumon in the passage was startled by it.  He placed Diana tenderly in the Counsellor’s arm-chair, saying,—­

“No, you shall not kill yourself, nor shall you leave me.”

She smiled faintly, and held out her arms to him.  Her magic spells were deftly woven.

“No,” cried he; “the poison which you had intended to use on yourself shall become my weapon of vengeance, and the instrument of punishment of the one who has wronged you.”

And with the gait of a man walking in his sleep, he left the Counsellor’s office.

Hardly had the young man’s footsteps died away, than Daumon entered the room.  He had not lost a word or action in the foregoing scene, and he was terribly agitated; and he could scarcely believe his eyes when he saw Diana, whom he had supposed to be lying half-sensible in the arm-chair, standing at the window, gazing after Norbert, as he walked along the road leading from the Counsellor’s cottage.

“Ah! what a woman!” muttered he.  “Gracious powers, what a wonderful woman!”

When Diana had lost sight of her lover, she turned round to Daumon.  Her face was pale, and her eyelids swollen, but her eyes flashed with the conviction of success.

“To-morrow, Counsellor,” said she, “to-morrow I shall be the Duchess de Champdoce.”

Daumon was so overwhelmed that, accustomed as he was to startling events and underhand trickery, he could find no words to express his feelings.

“That is to say,” added Diana thoughtfully, “if all goes as it should to-night.”

Daumon felt a cold shiver creep over him, but summoning up all his self-possession, he said, “I do not understand you.  What is this that you hope will be accomplished to-night?”