strange doings, Ma'am,--very strange!"

"Aha!" I thought; "they have discovered the absence or flight of those
unhappy creatures."

"Very strange doings!" he repeated. "The foreign lady who sang to-night,
and the gentleman too, is both dead."

"Dead!" I exclaimed. "Why, you are mistaken. I saw them just this
instant on the sands below the cliff."

The man looked at me as if he thought me crazy.

"I mean the singers, Ma'am,--them as sang at the concert to-night. They
was both taken nigh about the same time, was handled just alike, and
died here a little while ago, a'most at once, as you might say. Folks is
talking hard about the husband of the Madame."

Then he added, in a lower tone, confidentially, "They do say he poisoned
'em; for, you see, he it was that dressed the lobster salad at dinner,
and made 'em both eat hearty of it, though they were unwilling; and now
they have him over in the office there, in custody."

"But, my good man," I said, as soon as I could get my breath, "I assure
you they are not dead."

"Well, Ma'am, if you don't believe my words, you can see 'em with your
own eyes, if you choose"; and he led the way into the hall of the hotel.

I followed him. We entered a side room,--a sort of reception
_salon_,--where the two poor creatures were, indeed lying extended on
sofas. Several startled persons were gazing at them, but the larger
portion of the crowd were drawn off to the other side of the hotel,
where the unhappy, stunned husband was listening to the fearful charges
of murder,--murder of his wife and his friend!

I stepped up to the dead bodies,--one after the other. Their dresses had
not even been changed. The stage finery looked very pitiful. A muslin
mantle had been thrown over Madame C----'s bare shoulders and beautiful
bosom; from it arose the same curious perfume I had noticed on the
beach. It was as if that delicate, rare smell had been kept in a box of
some kind of odoriferous resinous wood.

I touched their cold brows, their icy fingers,--noticed the poor
features, drawn by acute suffering,--and strange as it was, I could see
on both faces, as if behind a gauzy film, the same sad, wild, longing
look of love I had observed on the countenances of those two shadowy
beings I had met on the sands.

I left the hotel, and walked to the cottage, with my mind in a sad,
bewildered state. I entered the open door, and went to the sick-room.
There stood Max and Ernestine, and she was weepi