anguishing and
regal grace; it made her pale complexion yet more fair, and it heightened
the brilliancy of her look. She had the air of a young tragic queen, or
of an allegory of Night. In the evening an hour arrived when the reserve
which for some time had marked their relations was forgotten. M. de
Camors found himself, as in olden time, at the feet of the young
Marquise--his eyes gazing into hers, and covering with kisses her lovely
hands. She was strange that evening. She looked at him with a wild
tenderness, instilling, at pleasure, into his veins the poison of burning
passion then escaping him, the tears gathering in her eyes. Suddenly, by
one of those magical movements of hers, she enveloped with her hands the
head of her lover, and spoke to him quite low beneath the shadow of this
perfumed veil.

"We might be so happy!" she said.

"Are we not so?" said Camors.

"No! I at least am not, for you are not all mine, as I am yours. This
appears harder, now that I am free. If you had remained free--when I
think of it! or if you could become so, it would be heaven!"

"You know that I am not so! Why speak of it?"

She drew nearer to him, and with her breath, more than with her voice,
answered:

"Is it impossible? Tell me!"

"How?" he demanded.

She did not reply, but her fixed look, caressing and cruel, answered him.

"Speak, then, I beg of you!" murmured Camors.

"Have you not told me--I have not forgotten it--that we are united by
ties stronger than all others; that the world and its laws exist no
longer for us; that there is no other good, no other bad for us, but our
happiness or our unhappiness? Well, we are not happy, and if we could be
so--listen, I have thought well over it!"

Her lips touched the cheek of Camors, and the murmur of her last words
was lost in her kisses.

Camors roughly repelled her, sprang up, and stood before her.

"Charlotte," he said, sternly, "this is only a trial, I hope; but, trial
or no, never repeat it--never! Remember!"

She also quickly drew herself up.

"Ah! how you love her!" she cried. "Yes, you love her, it is she you
love-I know it, I feel it, and I-I am only the wretched object of your
pity, or of your caprice. Very well, go back to her--go and protect her,
for I swear to you she is in peril!"

He smiled with his haughty irony.

"Let us see your plot," he said. "So you intend to kill her?"

"If I can!" she said; and her superb arm was stretched out as if to s