ut the horror of the situation restored Blanche's calmness.

"All is not yet lost," she exclaimed. "It was in that great box
there upon the table, where I found"--she dared not utter the word
poison--"the white powder which I poured into the bowl. You know this
powder; you must know the antidote."

Marie-Anne sadly shook her head.

"Nothing can save me now," she murmured, in an almost inaudible voice;
"but I do not complain. Who knows the misery from which death may
preserve me? I do not crave life; I have suffered so much during the
past year; I have endured such humiliation; I have wept so much! A curse
was upon me!"

She was suddenly endowed with that clearness of mental vision so often
granted to the dying. She saw how she had wrought her own undoing by
consenting to accept the perfidious role imposed upon her by her father,
and how she, herself, had paved the way for the falsehoods, slander,
crimes and misfortunes of which she had been the victim.

Her voice grew fainter and fainter. Worn out by suffering, a sensation
of drowsiness stole over her. She was falling asleep in the arms of
death.

Suddenly such a terrible thought pierced the stupor which enveloped her
that she uttered a heart-breaking cry:

"My child!"

Collecting, by a superhuman effort, all the will, energy, and strength
that the poison had left her, she straightened herself in her arm-chair,
her features contracted by mortal anguish.

"Blanche!" she said, with an energy of which one would have supposed her
incapable. "Blanche, listen to me. It is the secret of my life which I
am about to disclose; no one suspects it. I have a son by Maurice. Alas!
many months have elapsed since my husband disappeared. If he is dead,
what will become of my child? Blanche, you, who have killed me, must
swear to me that you will be a mother to my child!"

Blanche was utterly overcome.

"I swear!" she sobbed, "I swear!"

"On that condition, but on that condition alone, I pardon you. But take
care! Do not forget your oath! Blanche, God sometimes permits the dead
to avenge themselves! You have sworn, remember.

"My spirit will allow you no rest if you do not fulfil your vow."

"I will remember," sobbed Blanche; "I will remember. But the child----"

"Ah! I was afraid--cowardly creature that I was! I dreaded the
shame--then Maurice insisted--I sent my child away--your jealousy and
my death are my punishment. Poor child! I abandoned him to strangers.
Wretch