l bouquet of roses, beautiful to see as the fairest that ever
filled the lap of Flora.

Caroline clasped it with both hands, exclaiming in a voice of
exultation, while every feature radiated with joy, "It is the gift of
God, and the return of Francois's love! All will yet be well!"

She pressed the glowing flowers to her lips with passionate kisses,
breathed once or twice their mortal poison, and suddenly throwing back
her head with her dark eyes fixed on vacancy, but holding the fatal
bouquet fast in her hands, fell dead at the feet of La Corriveau.

A weird laugh, terrible and unsuppressed, rang around the walls of the
secret chamber, where the lamps burned bright as ever; but the glowing
pictures of the tapestry never changed a feature. Was it not strange
that even those painted men should not have cried out at the sight of so
pitiless a murder?

Caroline lay amid them all, the flush of joy still on her cheek, the
smile not yet vanished from her lips. A pity for all the world, could it
have seen her; but in that lonely chamber no eye pitied her.

But now a more cruel thing supervened. The sight of Caroline's lifeless
form, instead of pity or remorse, roused all the innate furies that
belonged to the execrable race of La Corriveau. The blood of generations
of poisoners and assassins boiled and rioted in her veins. The spirits
of Beatrice Spara and of La Voisin inspired her with new fury. She was
at this moment like a pantheress that has brought down her prey and
stands over it to rend it in pieces.

Caroline lay dead, dead beyond all doubt, never to be resuscitated,
except in the resurrection of the just. La Corriveau bent over her and
felt her heart; it was still. No sign of breath flickered on lip or
nostril.

The poisoner knew she was dead, but something still woke her suspicions,
as with a new thought she drew back and looked again at the beauteous
form before her. Suddenly, as if to make assurance doubly sure, she
plucked the sharp Italian stiletto from her bosom, and with a firm,
heavy hand plunged it twice into the body of the lifeless girl. "If
there be life there," she said, "it too shall die! La Corriveau leaves
no work of hers half done!"

A faint trickle of blood in red threads ran down the snow-white
vestment, and that was all! The heart had forever ceased to beat, and
the blood to circulate. The golden bowl was broken and the silver cord
of life loosed forever, and yet this last indignity would