e
glanced about her with something like fierce pride; then the girl's eyes
fell, and she stood, admirable in her modesty.

"Helene, did you go up to the room where----?"

"Yes, father."

"Helene" (and his voice shook with a convulsive tremor), "is this the
first time that you have seen this man?"

"Yes, father."

"Then it is not natural that you should intend to--"

"If it is not natural, father, at any rate it is true."

"Oh! child," said the Marquise, lowering her voice, but not so much but
that her husband could hear her, "you are false to all the principles of
honor, modesty, and right which I have tried to cultivate in your
heart. If until this fatal hour you life has only been one lie, there is
nothing to regret in your loss. It can hardly be the moral perfection of
this stranger that attracts you to him? Can it be the kind of power that
commits crime? I have too good an opinion of you to suppose that--"

"Oh, suppose everything, madame," Helene said coldly.

But though her force of character sustained this ordeal, her flashing
eyes could scarcely hold the tears that filled them. The stranger,
watching her, guessed the mother's language from the girl's tears,
and turned his eagle glance upon the Marquise. An irresistible power
constrained her to look at this terrible seducer; but as her eyes met
his bright, glittering gaze, she felt a shiver run through her frame,
such a shock as we feel at the sight of a reptile or the contact of a
Leyden jar.

"Dear!" she cried, turning to her husband, "this is the Fiend himself.
He can divine everything!"

The General rose to his feet and went to the bell.

"He means ruin for you," Helene said to the murderer.

The stranger smiled, took one forward stride, grasped the General's arm,
and compelled him to endure a steady gaze which benumbed the soldier's
brain and left him powerless.

"I will repay you now for your hospitality," he said, "and then we shall
be quits. I will spare you the shame by giving myself up. After all,
what should I do now with my life?"

"You could repent," answered Helene, and her glance conveyed such hope
as only glows in a young girl's eyes.

"_I shall never repent_," said the murderer in a sonorous voice, as he
raised his head proudly.

"His hands are stained with blood," the father said.

"I will wipe it away," she answered.

"But do you so much as know whether he cares for you?" said her father,
not daring now to look at the s