t part from me in anger. Oh, my wife, let me fold you
in my arms once more! And once, just once, I pray you, let me kiss
you! Are you not my own?"

She recoiled a step, her brown eyes lightened, and her words fell
crisp as icicles:

"Since I was a bride, three weeks a wife, since you pressed them
last, no man's lips have touched mine. I hold them too sacred to that
dear buried past to be submitted to a pressure less holy--to be
profaned by those of another woman's husband. Only my daughter kisses
my lips. Yours are soiled with perjury, and belong to the wife and
child of your choice. Go, pay your vows, be true at last to
something. Good-bye."

He came closer, but her pitiless chill face repulsed him. Seizing her
beautiful hand, white and cold as marble, he lifted it, but the flash
of the diamonds smote his heart like a heavy flail.

"The death's head that you gave me as a bridal token! Is there not a
fatality even in symbols? Upon my wedding ring stands the cinerary
urn that soon sepulchred my peace, my hopes. A mockery so exquisite
could not have been accidental, and faithfully that grinning skeleton
has walked with me. The ghastly coat of arms of Laurance."

She had thrown off his clasp, raised her hand, and turned the ring
over, till the jewels glowed, then it fell back nerveless at her
side.

"Minnie."

His voice was broken, but her lustrous eyes betrayed no hint of pity.

"My wife has no pardon for her erring husband. I have merited none,
still I hoped for one kind farewell word from lips that are strangely
dear to me. So be it. Tell my daughter, if her unhappy father dared
to pray, he would invoke Heaven's choicest blessings on her young
innocent head. And, Minnie love, let our baby's eyes and lips
successfully plead pardon for her father's unintentional sins against
the wife he never ceased to love."

He caught the hand once more, kissed the ring he had placed there
eighteen years before, and, feeling his hot trembling lips upon her
icy fingers, she shut her eyes. When she opened them--she was alone.

"We twain have met like ships upon the sea,
Who hold an hour's converse, so short, so sweet;--
One little hour! and then, away they speed,
On lonely paths, through mist, and cloud and foam--
To meet no more!"

CHAPTER XXXV.

From the window of one of those beautiful villas that encrust the
shores of Como, nestling like white birds at the base of t