had forgotten him! Miserable wretch! He returned,
he threatened her, he was about to avenge himself: she was sure of it!

That paper contained something horrible. What could Michel Menko have
to say to Prince Andras, writing him at such an hour, except to tell him
that the wretched woman he had married was branded with infamy?

She shuddered from head to foot, steadying herself against the piano,
her lips trembling nervously.

"I assure you, Marsa--" began the Prince, taking her hands. "Your hands
are cold. Are you ill?"

His eyes followed the direction of Marsa's, which were still riveted
upon the piano with a dumb look of unutterable agony.

He instantly seized the sealed package, and, holding it up, exclaimed:

"One would think that it was this which troubled you!"

"O Prince! I swear to you!--"

"Prince?"

He repeated in amazement this title which she suddenly gave him; she,
who called him Andras, as he called her Marsa. Prince? He also, in his
turn, felt a singular sensation of fright, wondering what that package
contained, and if Marsa's fate and his own were not connected with some
unknown thing within it.

"Let us see," he said, abruptly breaking the seals, "what this is."

Rapidly, and as if impelled, despite herself, Marsa caught the wrist of
her husband in her icy hand, and, terrified, supplicating, she cried, in
a wild, broker voice:

"No, no, I implore you! No! Do not read it! Do not read it!"

He contemplated her coldly, and, forcing himself to be calm, asked:

"What does this parcel of Michel Menko's contain?"

"I do not know," gasped Marsa. "But do not read it! In the name of the
Virgin" (the sacred adjuration of the Hungarians occurring to her mind,
in the midst of her agony), "do not read it!"

"But you must be aware, Princess," returned Andras, "that you are taking
the very means to force me to read it."

She shivered and moaned, there was such a change in the way Andras
pronounced this word, which he had spoken a moment before in tones so
loving and caressing--Princess.

Now the word threatened her.

"Listen! I am about to tell you: I wished--Ah! My God! My God! Unhappy
woman that I am! Do not read, do not read!"

Andras, who had turned very pale, gently removed her grasp from the
package, and said, very slowly and gravely, but with a tenderness in
which hope still appeared:

"Come, Marsa, let us see; what do you wish me to think? Why do you wish
me not to read these letters