native to my soul. Let
me hesitate no longer, but go and solve the problem before I grow
afraid. Afraid--I am not afraid. 'I have immortal longings in me.' Who
was it said that? Oh, Cleopatra! Was Cleopatra more beautiful than I
am, I wonder? I am sure that she was not so great; for, had I been
her, Antony should have driven Caesar out of Egypt. Oh! if I could
have loved with a pure and perfect love as other women may, and
intertwined my destiny with that of some _great_ man--some being of a
nature kindred to my own--I should have been good and happy, and he
should have ruled this country. But Fate and Fortune, grown afraid of
what I should do, linked my life to a soulless brute! and, alas! like
him I have fallen--fallen irretrievably!"

She closed the window, and, coming into the room, rang the bell.

"Bring me some wine," she said to the servant. "I do not feel well."

"What wine, my lady?"

"Champagne."

The wine was brought, and stood, uncorked, upon the table.

"That will do," she said. "Tell my maid not to sit up for me: it will
be late before I go to bed to-night."

The man bowed and went, and she poured out some of the sparkling wine,
and then, taking the little phial, opened it with difficulty, and
emptied its contents into the glass. The wine boiled up furiously,
turned milk-white, and then cleared again; but the poison had
destroyed its sparkle--it was dead as ditch-water.

"That is strange," she said, "I never saw that effect before." Next
she took the phial and powdered it into a pinch of tiny dust with a
whale's tooth that lay upon the table. The dust she took to the window
and threw out, a little at a time. Lady Bellamy wished to die as she
had lived, a mystery. Then she came and stood over the deadly draught
she had compounded, and thought sometimes aloud and sometimes to
herself.

"I have heard it said that suicides are cowards; let those who say it,
stand as I stand to-night, with death lying in the little circle of a
glass before them, and they will know whether they are cowards, or if
they are spirits of a braver sort than those who can bear to drudge to
the bitter end of life. It is not yet too late. I can throw that stuff
away. I can leave this place and begin life anew in some other
country, my jewels will give me the means, and, for the matter of
that, I can always win as much money as I want. But, no; then I must
begin again, and for that I have not the patience or the time.
Besides