annot hurt me any more--I am free--and
quite happy!"

Smiling, she continued her song:

"Ti saluto, Sol di Maggio
Col two raggio ti saluto!
Sei l'Apollo del passato
Sei l'amore incoronato!"

Again--again!--that hollow rumbling and crackling sound overhead. What
could it be?

"L'amore incoronato!" hummed Nina fitfully, as she plunged her round,
jeweled arm down again into the chest of treasure. "Si, si! Che morendo
si fa sposa--che morendo si fa sposa--ah!"

This last was an exclamation of pleasure; she had found some toy that
charmed her--it was the old mirror set in its frame of pearls. The
possession of this object seemed to fill her with extraordinary joy,
and she evidently retained no consciousness of where she was, for she
sat down on the upturned coffin, which had held my living body, with
absolute indifference. Still singing softly to herself, she gazed
lovingly at her own reflection, and fingered the jewels she wore,
arranging and rearranging them in various patterns with one hand, while
in the other she raised the looking-glass in the flare of the candles
which lighted up its quaint setting. A strange and awful picture she
made there--gazing with such lingering tenderness on the portrait of
her own beauty--while surrounded by the moldering coffins that silently
announced how little such beauty was worth--playing with jewels, the
foolish trinkets of life, in the abode of skeletons, where the password
is death! Thinking thus, I gazed at her, as one might gaze at a dead
body--not loathingly any more, but only mournfully. My vengeance was
satiated. I could not wage war against this vacantly smiling mad
creature, out of whom the spirit of a devilish intelligence and cunning
had been torn, and who therefore was no longer the same woman. Her loss
of wit should compensate for my loss of love. I determined to try and
attract her attention again. I opened my lips to speak--but before the
words could form themselves, that odd rumbling noise again broke on my
ears--this time with a loud reverberation that rolled overhead like the
thunder of artillery. Before I could imagine the reason of it--before I
could advance one step toward my wife, who still sat on the upturned
coffin, smiling at herself in the mirror--before I could utter a word
or move an inch, a tremendous crash resounded through the vault,
followed by a stinging shower of stones, dust, and pulverized mortar! I
stepped backward amazed, bewi