.

Without appearing to see her, like a spectre from the grave he came,
passed, and vanished, leaving her frozen with horror, as if she had
beheld a phantom from the dead and damned.

With steps winged with hideous alarm she sped through the intervening
chambers to that in which she had left Lucille.

She was standing with an ashy smile of triumph on her face, and in her
hand was still mechanically grasped the queer little vial with its four
spires of gold.

Monsieur Le Prun had recovered his self-possession to a certain extent
by the time he reached the apartment where he had left Blassemare. But
that observant gentleman did not fail to perceive, at a glance, that
something had occurred to agitate his patron profoundly.

"Egad," he thought, "I should not be surprised if the girl were taken at
disadvantage by his abrupt visit, and that the venerable Adonis saw
something to justify his jealousy. A husband has no right to surprise
his wife. Le Prun," he continued carelessly aloud, "I wonder why Nature,
who has been so bounteous to the sex, has not furnished husbands, like
certain snakes, with rattles to their tails, to give involuntary warning
of their approach."

Le Prun poured out a glass of cold water and drank it. Blassemare
observed, as he did so, that his hand trembled violently. The
fermier-general was silent, and his flippant Mercury did not care just
then to hazard any experiment upon his temper.

"Blassemare!" he exclaimed, abruptly arresting his glass, and eyeing his
companion with a sort of brutal rage, "I ought to run you through the
body, sir, where you stand, for your accursed perfidy."

"What! _me?_--by my soul, sir, I don't understand you," he replied, at
once offended and amazed. "Why the devil should you murder me?"

"You have broken your word with me!"

"In what respect?"

"Exactly where it was most vitally needful to keep it, sir."

"Deuce take me if I know what you mean."

"You do--you _do_--a thousand curses! You _must_ know it."

"But hang me if I do."

"You have suffered that _calumny_ to reach her ears."

"What calumny?"

"She must have seen her."

"_Her!_--whom?"

"She must have spoken with her."

"Do say, plainly, what it _is_ all about?"

"About that--that d---- woman; there, is _that_ intelligible? She is at
large, sir, in spite of all I've said--in spite of all you undertook,
sir; and she has been filling my wife's ears with those hell-born lies
that have been whi