“Hush! do not speak so.  You must not, you shall not die!  If you should die—­great God! what would my life be afterward?”

Marie-Anne made no reply.  The poison was pursuing its work of dissolution.  Her breath made a whistling sound as it forced its way through her inflamed throat; her tongue, when she moved it, produced in her mouth the terrible sensation of a piece of red-hot iron; her lips were parched and swollen; her hands, inert and paralyzed, would no longer obey her will.

But the horror of the situation restored Blanche’s calmness.

“All is not yet lost,” she exclaimed.  “It was in that great box there upon the table, where I found”—­she dared not utter the word poison—­“the white powder which I poured into the bowl.  You know this powder; you must know the antidote.”

Marie-Anne sadly shook her head.

“Nothing can save me now,” she murmured, in an almost inaudible voice; “but I do not complain.  Who knows the misery from which death may preserve me?  I do not crave life; I have suffered so much during the past year; I have endured such humiliation; I have wept so much!  A curse was upon me!”

She was suddenly endowed with that clearness of mental vision so often granted to the dying.  She saw how she had wrought her own undoing by consenting to accept the perfidious role imposed upon her by her father, and how she, herself, had paved the way for the falsehoods, slander, crimes and misfortunes of which she had been the victim.

Her voice grew fainter and fainter.  Worn out by suffering, a sensation of drowsiness stole over her.  She was falling asleep in the arms of death.

Suddenly such a terrible thought pierced the stupor which enveloped her that she uttered a heart-breaking cry: 

“My child!”

Collecting, by a superhuman effort, all the will, energy, and strength that the poison had left her, she straightened herself in her arm-chair, her features contracted by mortal anguish.

“Blanche!” she said, with an energy of which one would have supposed her incapable.  “Blanche, listen to me.  It is the secret of my life which I am about to disclose; no one suspects it.  I have a son by Maurice.  Alas! many months have elapsed since my husband disappeared.  If he is dead, what will become of my child?  Blanche, you, who have killed me, must swear to me that you will be a mother to my child!”

Blanche was utterly overcome.

“I swear!” she sobbed, “I swear!”

“On that condition, but on that condition alone, I pardon you.  But take care!  Do not forget your oath!  Blanche, God sometimes permits the dead to avenge themselves!  You have sworn, remember.

“My spirit will allow you no rest if you do not fulfil your vow.”

“I will remember,” sobbed Blanche; “I will remember.  But the child——­”

“Ah!  I was afraid—­cowardly creature that I was!  I dreaded the shame—­then Maurice insisted—­I sent my child away—­your jealousy and my death are my punishment.  Poor child!  I abandoned him to strangers.  Wretched woman that I am!  Ah! this suffering is too horrible.  Blanche, remember——­”