ogether. "Doubt no longer that Angelica is much attached to you.
Clearly did I read in her eyes to-day that she is devotedly in love
with you. But the devil is always busy, and sows his poisonous tares
amongst the blooming wheat. Marguerite is on fire with an insane
passion. She loves you with all the wild, passionate pain which only a
fiery temperament is capable of feeling. The senseless way in which she
behaved tonight was the effect of an irresistible outbreak of the
wildest jealousy. When Angelica let fall the handkerchief--when you
took it up and gave it to her--when you kissed her hand--the furies of
hell possessed that poor Marguerite. And you are to blame for that. You
used formerly to take the greatest pains to pay every kind of attention
to that very beautiful French girl. I know well enough that it was only
Angelica whom you had in your mind. Still, those falsely directed
lightnings struck, and set on fire. And now the misfortune is there;
and I do not know how the matter will end without terrible tumult and
trouble."

"Marguerite be hanged (if I may use such an expression)," said Moritz.
"If Angelica loves me--and ah! I can't believe, quite, that she does--I
am the happiest and the most blest of men, and care nothing about all
the Marguerites in the world, nor their foolishnesses neither. But
another fear has come into my mind. This uncanny, stranger Count, who
came in amongst us like some dark, gloomy mystery--doesn't he seem to
place himself, somehow, most hostilely between her and me? I feel, I
scarce know how, as if some reminiscence came forward out of the dark
background--I could almost describe it as a dream--which reminiscence,
or dream, whichever it may be, brings this Count to my memory under
terrible circumstances of some sort. I feel as though, wherever he
makes his appearance, some awful misfortune must come flashing out of
the depths of the darkness as a result of his conjurations. Did you
notice how often his eyes rested on Angelica, and how, when they did, a
feeble flush tinted his pallid cheeks, and disappeared again rapidly?
The monster has designs upon my darling; and that is why the words
which he addressed to me sounded so insulting. But I will oppose him
and resist him to the very death!"

Dagobert said the Count was a supernatural sort of fellow, no doubt,
with something very eery and spectral about him, and that it would be
as well to keep a sharp look-out on his proceedings, though