re
Adele Rossignol; she is so severe in her criticism, is she not? But
since we are alone, I will presume to point out to mademoiselle that
those diamond eardrops which I see peeping out under the scarf are a
little ostentatious in her present predicament. They are a provocation
to thieves. Will mademoiselle permit me to remove them?"

She caught her by the neck and lifted her up. She pushed the lace scarf
up at the side of Celia's head. Celia began to struggle furiously,
convulsively. She kicked and writhed, and a little tearing sound was
heard. One of her shoe-buckles had caught in the thin silk covering of
the cushion and slit it. Helene Vauquier let her fall. She felt
composedly in her pocket, and drew from it an aluminium flask--the same
flask which Lemerre was afterward to snatch up in the bedroom in
Geneva. Celia stared at her in dread. She saw the flask flashing in the
light. She shrank from it. She wondered what new horror was to grip
her. Helene unscrewed the top and laughed pleasantly.

"Mlle. Celie is under control," she said. "We shall have to teach her
that it is not polite in young ladies to kick." She pressed Celia down
with a hand upon her back, and her voice changed. "Lie still," she
commanded savagely. "Do you hear? Do you know what this is, Mlle.
Celie?" And she held the flask towards the girl's face. "This is
vitriol, my pretty one. Move, and I'll spoil these smooth white
shoulders for you. How would you like that?"

Celia shuddered from head to foot, and, burying her face in the
cushion, lay trembling. She would have begged for death upon her knees
rather than suffer this horror. She felt Vauquier's fingers lingering
with a dreadful caressing touch upon her shoulders and about her
throat. She was within an ace of the torture, the disfigurement, and
she knew it. She could not pray for mercy. She could only lie quite
still, as she was bidden, trying to control the shuddering of her limbs
and body.

"It would be a good lesson for Mlle. Celie," Helene continued slowly.
"I think that if Mlle. Celie will forgive the liberty I ought to
inflict it. One little tilt of the flask and the satin of these pretty
shoulders--"

She broke off suddenly and listened. Some sound heard outside had given
Celia a respite, perhaps more than a respite. Helene set the flask down
upon the table. Her avarice had got the better of her hatred. She
roughly plucked the earrings out of the girl's ears. She hid them
quickly