Then she rose quickly, and taking something from the jewel-box, thrust
it into Unorna's hands.

"I cannot tell why I have told you--but I have. You shall see him too.
What does it matter? We have both loved, we are both unhappy--we shall
never meet again."

"What is it?" Unorna tried to ask, holding the closed case in her
hands. She knew what was within it well enough, and her self-command was
forsaking her. It was almost more than she could bear. It was as though
Beatrice were wreaking vengeance on her, instead of her destroying her
rival as she had meant to do, sooner or later.

Beatrice took the thing from her, opened it, gazed at it a moment, and
put it again into Unorna's hands. "It was like him," she said, watching
her companion as though to see what effect the portrait would produce.
Then she shrank back.

Unorna was looking at her. Her face was livid and unnaturally drawn, and
the extraordinary contrast in the colour of her two eyes was horribly
apparent. The one seemed to freeze, the other to be on fire. The
strongest and worst passions that can play upon the human soul were all
expressed with awful force in the distorted mask, and not a trace of the
magnificent beauty so lately there was visible. Beatrice shrank back in
horror.

"You know him!" she cried, half guessing at the truth.

"I know him--and I love him," said Unorna slowly and fiercely, her eyes
fixed on her enemy, and gradually leaning towards her so as to bring her
face nearer and nearer to Beatrice.

The dark woman tried to rise, and could not. There was worse than anger,
or hatred, or the intent to kill, in those dreadful eyes. There was
a fascination from which no living thing could escape. She tried to
scream, to shut out the vision, to raise her hand as a screen before it.
Nearer and nearer it came, and she could feel the warm breath of it upon
her cheek. Then her brain reeled, her limbs relaxed, and her head fell
back against the wall.

"I know him, and I love him," were the last words Beatrice heard.

CHAPTER XX[*]

[*] The deeds here recounted are not imaginary. Not very
long ago the sacrilege which Unorna attempted was actually
committed at night in a Catholic church in London, under
circumstances that clearly proved the intention of some
person or persons to defile the consecrated wafers. A case
of hypnotic suggestion to the committal of a crime in a
convent occurred in Hungary not many y