softly, looked in my face, then perched on a mutilated red granite sphinx immediately in front of me, and after a moment rose, circled above me in the pure, rainless air and flew westward.  I accepted it as an omen, and started to America instead of to Persia.  On the night of the tenth of December, four years after I bade you good-bye at the park gate, I was again at Le Bocage.  Silently and undiscovered I stole into my own house, and secreted myself behind the curtains in the library.  I had been there one hour when you and Gordon Leigh came in to examine the Targum.  Oh, Edna! how little you dreamed of the eager, hungry eyes that watched you!  During that hour that you two sat there bending over the same book, I became thoroughly convinced that while I loved you as I never expected to love any one, Gordon also loved you, and intended if possible to make you his wife.  I contrasted my worn, haggard face and grayish locks with his, so full of manly hope and youthful beauty, and I could not doubt that any girl would prefer him to me.  Edna, my retribution began then.  I felt that my devil was mocking me, as I had long mocked others, and made me love you when it was impossible to win you.  Then and there I was tempted to spring upon and throttle you both before he triumphantly called you his.  At last Leigh left, and I escaped to my own rooms.  I was pacing the floor when I heard you cross the rotunda and saw the glimmer of the light you carried.  Hoping to see you open the little Taj, I crawled behind the sarcophagus that holds my two mummies, crouched close to the floor, and peeped at you across the gilded byssus that covered them.  My eyes, I have often been told, possess magnetic or mesmeric power.  At all events, you felt my eager gaze, you were restless, and searched the room to discover whence that feeling of a human presence came.  Darling, were you superstitious, that you avoided looking into the dark corner where the mummies lay?  Presently you stopped in front of the little tomb, and swept away the spider-web, and took the key from your pocket, and as you put it into the lock I almost shouted aloud in my savage triumph!  I absolutely panted to find Leigh’s future wife as unworthy of confidence as I believed the remainder of her sex.  But you did not open it.  You merely drove away the spider and rubbed the marble clean with your handkerchief, and held the key between your fingers.  Then my heart seemed to stand still, as I watched the light streaming over your beautiful, holy face and warm, crimson dress; and when you put the key in your pocket and turned away, my groan almost betrayed me.  I had taken out my watch to see the hour, and in my suspense I clutched it so tightly that the gold case and the crystal within all crushed in my hand.  You heard the tingling sound and wondered whence it came; and when you had locked the door and gone, I raised one of the windows and swung myself down to the terrace.  Do you remember that night?”