f the young fanatic.
As a skillful general, seeing the enemy ready to surrender, marches
toward him with a cry of victory, she rose, beautiful as an antique
priestess, inspired like a Christian virgin, her arms extended, her
throat uncovered, her hair disheveled, holding with one hand her robe
modestly drawn over her breast, her look illumined by that fire which
had already created such disorder in the veins of the young Puritan, and
went toward him, crying out with a vehement air, and in her melodious
voice, to which on this occasion she communicated a terrible energy:

"Let this victim to Baal be sent, To the lions the martyr be thrown!
Thy God shall teach thee to repent! From th' abyss he'll give ear to my
moan."

Felton stood before this strange apparition like one petrified.

"Who art thou? Who art thou?" cried he, clasping his hands. "Art thou a
messenger from God; art thou a minister from hell; art thou an angel or
a demon; callest thou thyself Eloa or Astarte?"

"Do you not know me, Felton? I am neither an angel nor a demon; I am a
daughter of earth, I am a sister of thy faith, that is all."

"Yes, yes!" said Felton, "I doubted, but now I believe."

"You believe, and still you are an accomplice of that child of Belial
who is called Lord de Winter! You believe, and yet you leave me in the
hands of mine enemies, of the enemy of England, of the enemy of God!
You believe, and yet you deliver me up to him who fills and defiles the
world with his heresies and debaucheries--to that infamous Sardanapalus
whom the blind call the Duke of Buckingham, and whom believers name
Antichrist!"

"I deliver you up to Buckingham? I? what mean you by that?"

"They have eyes," cried Milady, "but they see not; ears have they, but
they hear not."

"Yes, yes!" said Felton, passing his hands over his brow, covered with
sweat, as if to remove his last doubt. "Yes, I recognize the voice which
speaks to me in my dreams; yes, I recognize the features of the angel
who appears to me every night, crying to my soul, which cannot sleep:
'Strike, save England, save thyself--for thou wilt die without having
appeased God!' Speak, speak!" cried Felton, "I can understand you now."

A flash of terrible joy, but rapid as thought, gleamed from the eyes of
Milady.

However fugitive this homicide flash, Felton saw it, and started as if
its light had revealed the abysses of this woman's heart. He recalled,
all at once, the warnings of Lord d