bered her promise, but she did not intend to fulfil it.

She had considered the matter, and she saw the terrible risk to which
she exposed herself if she endeavored to find the missing child.

"The father will be sure to discover it," she thought.

But she was to realize the power of her victim's threats that same
evening.

Overcome with fatigue, she retired to her room at an early hour, and
instead of reading, as she was accustomed to do before retiring, she
extinguished her candle as soon as she had undressed, saying:

"I must sleep."

But sleep had fled. Her crime was ever in her thoughts; it rose before
her in all its horror and atrocity. She knew that she was lying upon
her bed, at Courtornieu; and yet it seemed as if she was there in
Chanlouineau's house, pouring out poison, then watching its effects,
concealed in the dressing-room.

She was struggling against these thoughts; she was exerting all her
strength of will to drive away these terrible memories, when she thought
she heard the key turn in the lock. She lifted her head from the pillow
with a start.

Then, by the uncertain light of her night-lamp, she thought she saw the
door open slowly and noiselessly. Marie-Anne entered--gliding in like
a phantom. She seated herself in an arm-chair near the bed. Great tears
were rolling down her cheeks, and she looked sadly, yet threateningly,
around her.

The murderess hid her face under the bed-covers; and her whole body
was bathed in an icy perspiration. For her, this was not a mere
apparition--it was a frightful reality.

But hers was not a nature to submit unresistingly to such an impression.
She shook off the stupor that was creeping over her, and tried to reason
with herself aloud, as if the sound of her voice would reassure her.

"I am dreaming!" she said. "Do the dead return to life? Am I childish
enough to be frightened by phantoms born of my own imaginations?"

She said this, but the phantom did not disappear.

She shut her eyes, but still she saw it through her closed
eyelids--through the coverings which she had drawn up over her head, she
saw it still.

Not until daybreak did Mme. Blanche fall asleep.

And it was the same the next night, and the night following that, and
always and always; and the terrors of each night were augmented by the
terrors of the nights which had preceded it.

During the day, in the bright sunshine, she regained her courage, and
became sceptical again. Then she r