He drew his breath with a hissing sound, and a dark flush Stained his broad smooth brow.

“On my honor as a gentleman, I came here to-day solely to—­”

“Solely to assure yourself of some doubtful link you must weld into your chain; solely to plunge the scalpel of some double-edged question.  If there must be an ante mortem examination, we will wait, if you please, for the legal dissection when I am stretched before the jury-box.  Until then, you have no right to intrude upon the misery you have brought on an innocent woman.”

They stood so near each other, that he could count the fierce throbbing of the artery in her round snowy throat, and see the shadow of her long lashes; and again some electric current flashed from her feverishly bright eyes, burning its way to the secret chambers of his selfish heart, melting the dross that ambition and greed had slowly cemented, and dropping one deathless spark into a deep adytum, of the existence of which he had never even dreamed.  Unconsciously he leaned toward her, but she pressed back against the iron bars, and drew her dress aside as if shunning a leper.  There was no petulance in the motion, but its significance pricked him, like a dagger point.

“It was the hope of finding you an innocent woman, that must plead my pardon for what you consider an unwarrantable ‘intrusion.’  Will you believe me, if I swear to you, that I have come as a friend?”

“As a friend to me?  No.  As a friend to General Darrington and his adopted son Prince?  Yes.  Oh, Tiberius!  Your rosy apples are flavored like those your forefather offered Agrippina.”

“Do you regard me as an unscrupulous, calculating villain, who pretending kindness, plots treachery?  Do you deliberately offer me this wanton insult?”

His swart face reddened, and the fine lines of his handsome mouth hardened.

She shrank a few inches closer to the window, and compressed her lips.

“If you were a man, I should swiftly resent the affront you have thrust upon me, and suitable redress would be peculiarly sweet and welcome; but you are a defenceless and unfortunate woman, and my hands are tied.  I desire to help you; you repulse me and insult my manhood.  I will do my painful duty, because it is sternly and inexorably my duty; but, I wish to God, I had never set my eyes on you.”

The sudden passionate ring in his voice surprised her, and she looked searchingly at him, wondering into what pitfall it was intended to lure her.

“If you had never set your eyes on me?  Ah, would to God I had died ten thousand times before I encountered their evil spell!  If you had never set your eyes on me?  I should be now, a happy, hopeful girl, with life beckoning me like the rosy Syrian plains that smiled on the desert-weary.  The world looked so bright to me that day, when first I smelled the sweet resinous pines, and dreamed of my work, and all the glory of the victory, I knew