od mounted to his
discolored visage. "Don't fancy, madame, that I am doting, or that you
can manage me with your saucy coquetry or sulky insolence. I have a
will of my own, madame, under which, by Heaven, I'll force yours to
bend, were it fifty times as stubborn as ever woman's was yet. You shall
obey--you shall submit. If you will not practise your duty cheerfully,
you shall learn it in privation and tears; but one way or another, I'll
bring you to act, and to speak, and to _think_ as I please, or I'm not
your husband."

"Well, sir, try it: and in the mean time, I expect----"

"What do you expect?" he thundered.

"I expect to receive a counterpart of this," she said, with deliberate
emphasis, holding the magic vial steadily before his eyes.

For a second or two, the talisman appeared powerless, but only for so
long. On a sudden his gaze contracted--he became fascinated,
petrified--his face darkened, as if a tide of molten lead were projected
through every vessel--and a heavy dew of agony stood in beads upon his
puckered forehead. With all this horror was mingled a fury, if possible,
more frightful still; every fibre of his face was quivering; the hand
that was clenched and drawn back, as if it held a weapon to be hurled
into her heart, was quivering too; his mouth seemed gasping in vain for
words or voice; he resembled the malignant and tortured victim of a
satanic possession; and this frightful dumb apparition was imperceptibly
drawing nearer and nearer to her.

A sudden revulsion broke the horrid spell of which he was the slave;
like one awaking from a nightmare, conscience-stricken, he uttered a
trembling groan of agony, and with one hand upon his breast, the other
clutched upon his forehead, he hurried, speechless, like a despairing,
detected criminal, from the room.

IX.--THE UNTOLD SECRET.

Julie, who had heard high words as she traversed the apartments which
lay _en suite_, paused in the lobby at the stair-head--a sort of _oeil
de boeuf_, to which several corridors converged, and with a lofty
lantern-dome above, from which swung a cluster of rose-colored lamps.

Here she sat down upon a sofa, ill at ease on account of the scene which
was then going on so near her; and, in the midst of her reverie, raising
her eyes suddenly, she saw Monsieur Le Prun, the thick carpets rendering
his tread perfectly noiseless, gliding by her with a countenance guilty
and terrible beyond any thing that fancy had ever seen