d himself in some manner
and was quietly put out of the way."

"I will investigate the matter. He might have betrayed us, if caught
and put to the torture. I can make Prince Michael tell me. Moret was
more fool than knave, and he might have been induced to talk."

"He might have betrayed _us_; he would never betray _you_, Zara."

"I do not think so; and yet, it may be that I have gone too far with
him. It is plain that I must make my prince talk."

Her prince! God! How the expression rankled! What revelations this
overheard conversation was bringing to pass! From being in the seventh
heaven of bliss, transported there by the few moments I had passed in
the society of Zara, I was now plunged into the hell of doubt,
uncertainty, and disillusionment. She spoke of "her prince"--and there
could be no possible doubt that she referred to Prince Michael--as if
he were already a mere puppet in her hands, to bow before her and fawn
at her feet, as she willed it. And the prince, great and noble by
instinct and nature, who had with such dignity admitted to me his love
for her, was having his feelings and his affections played upon as a
skilled performer touches the keys of a piano.

It was a new and unsuspected phase of Zara's character thus unfolded to
me; and it was a most disquieting one. Standing with her as I had done
among her guests, seated beside her as I had been for a few moments
before I left her to go into the garden, I had believed in her as a
devout worshipper believes in his deity, thinking no evil, believing
that she could do no wrong, and placing her upon a pedestal that was
high above all of the petty considerations of ordinary humanity. And
then, as if to add to the sudden pain that was in my heart, this man
who dared to address her by her given name, and whom she called Ivan,
chuckled aloud as he remarked with unwonted intimacy:

"You have only to encourage him a little, Zara. The prince will talk.
Never fear. Your power----"

"Encourage him!" It is impossible to describe the sense of outrage
which Zara de Echeveria managed to include in the enunciation of
those two words. Listening from my place among the cushions in the
Turkish bower, I was conscious of a feeling of gladness that it was
so; that she resented the tone of the man, as well as the words he
had uttered; that she repudiated utterly the insinuation he had
made. "You use the term as if you thought it were a pleasure to me
to lead men on, simpl